When ‘safe enough‘ isn’t the whole story: what workers’ feelings of safety reveal about performance

Ask most employees whether they feel safe at work, and the majority will say yes. In new research from Peoplesafe, 92% of workers describe themselves as very or somewhat safe in their job. On the surface, that looks like a reassuring picture for employers.

Dig one layer deeper, though, and a different story emerges. In the same survey, 51% of workers say they felt unsafe at work at least once in the past year. These two findings are not a contradiction; they’re the whole point. 

A worker can generally feel safe while still experiencing specific moments, places or situations where that feeling disappears: the empty car park at closing time, the unpredictable customer, the shift with nobody else on the floor. 

Safety isn’t a fixed state: it’s contextual, and it shifts constantly depending on staffing, time of day, location and the general situation.

This distinction matters because of what happens next. The research’s central finding is that feeling unsafe doesn’t just sit with a worker; it changes what they do. Around 40% of respondents said safety concerns had caused them to change their behaviour or their working situation in some way. That includes avoiding certain areas or people, declining shifts, refusing to work alone, or becoming constantly alert to exits and surroundings instead of concentrating on the job itself.

As one retail worker put it: “Instead of focusing entirely on customer service or processing transactions, I find myself constantly scanning the shop floor for potential threats or watching the doors.”

That’s not a description of an incident. It’s a description of ongoing, low-level self-protection becoming part of the job, and it’s happening whether or not a formal safety incident has ever been logged. In fact, 32% of workers who had never reported a workplace safety concern said they had nevertheless felt unsafe at work in the past year. 

The gap between what gets reported and what’s actually being experienced is significant, and it’s one that traditional incident tracking simply isn’t built to capture.

The cost is measurable
Behavioural shifts that employees are making have direct organisational consequences. 

23% of workers said feelings of unsafety had negatively affected their productivity. 29% said safety concerns had affected their mental wellbeing. 16% had turned down work as a direct result of feeling unsafe, and 7% had taken time off because of safety concerns. 

Beyond these headline figures, the research also found that 16% of workers had considered leaving their employer altogether because of safety concerns, 14% had started avoiding particular locations as part of their role, and 11% had considered leaving their profession entirely. 8% had declined overtime and 8% had refused to work alone. Small percentages individually but, taken together, they describe a workforce quietly renegotiating the terms of its own participation.

Two employees, working in different roles and sectors, described almost identical experiences of what this looks like day-to-day.

One said: “When I feel unsafe at work, I become more cautious and less focused. I may avoid certain situations, keep to myself more, and spend extra time thinking about my surroundings instead of fully concentrating on the job.” Another described it in near-identical terms: “Feeling unsafe can make me more alert and distracted. I may avoid certain situations, limit my interactions, and focus more on protecting myself than on doing my job.”

The consistency of this language, across unconnected respondents, is itself telling; this isn’t an isolated complaint but a recognisable, shared experience of what it feels like to do a job while managing a background level of risk.

Sector focus: healthcare and retail
Alongside the general workforce consensus, the Peoplesafe research looked in greater depth at the healthcare and retail sectors. 

Healthcare workers report considerably higher rates across the board: 74% had felt unsafe at least once in the past year, compared with 51% generally. 45% said it had affected their productivity, roughly double the general workforce figure, and 52% reported an impact on mental wellbeing, compared with 29% generally. 29% of healthcare workers had turned down work because of feeling unsafe, nearly double the general rate of 16%. The most commonly cited causes were verbal abuse (49%), staffing shortages (43%), threatening behaviour (39%) and harassment from patients (33%) or visitors (31%), a reminder that the risk here is overwhelmingly third-party in origin, from the people healthcare workers are there to help.

One NHS nurse, describing a hospital she otherwise knows well and generally feels safe in, explained how that feeling changes after hours: “Suddenly it’s 8 o’clock at night... I’m in a sort of basement area of the hospital, nobody knows I’m here... and suddenly you feel quite unsafe.”

She described walking through empty corridors late in the evening or leaving work to walk alone to the car park at night, as the specific moments where her sense of safety shifted, despite nothing about the underlying job changing. Focus groups involving more than 60 NHS and healthcare staff reinforced this pattern, with participants consistently describing safety as something built from practical protection, psychological confidence and organisational support in combination, not any one of these alone.

Retail workers show a similar, if slightly less pronounced, pattern: 66% had felt unsafe in the past year, with 37% reporting an effect on wellbeing and 30% on productivity, both notably above the general workforce baseline. Remarkably, 29% of retail workers said they would be willing to accept additional shifts if they felt safer at work, suggesting a direct, practical link between perceived safety and workforce availability that goes beyond wellbeing alone.

A retail HR coordinator, drawing on experience across multiple stores, described a similar pattern from the management side. She had never personally felt unsafe while working in well-staffed stores herself but had witnessed colleagues being injured and attacked at work. Her account illustrates an important distinction the report returns to repeatedly: the conditions around a person, staffing levels, isolation, lighting and time of day, can shape how safe they feel long before – or entirely independent of – whether an incident actually occurs to them personally. As she put it, safety was strongly tied to not being isolated: having colleagues nearby, avoiding certain customers, and working in well-lit, open-plan spaces rather than tucked-away stockrooms or back offices.

Why incident data isn’t enough
Measuring safety through incident frequency alone will always miss a significant part of the picture. An incident can produce physical or psychological harm, but the perception that a situation is unsafe can influence behaviour before anything happens at all. By the time an incident is logged, the affected employee may already have spent months quietly avoiding certain tasks, requesting a colleague accompany them, or turning down shifts.

Treating behavioural change as a safety signal in its own right, not just a downstream effect of confirmed incidents, is where the research pushes current practice. 

Feeling unsafe reduces confidence, focus and willingness to participate, all of which are visible to employers well before a formal report ever lands on a desk, if organisations know to look for them. Focus group participants specifically flagged reduced confidence, difficulty communicating, and a reluctance to speak up or share ideas as consequences of feeling unsafe. These are all effects that show up in team performance and engagement long before they show up in an incident log.

What workers actually want
When asked what would help, the answers converged on a consistent set of themes across sectors: sufficient staffing, colleagues being available, clear procedures, knowing who to contact, and critically, confidence that raising a concern will lead to action. As one healthcare worker summarised: “Safety isn’t just about avoiding physical injuries. It includes physical safety, psychological safety, and having the right equipment, staffing and support.”

Technology has a role here, but a specific one. The appetite for tech-based safety solutions was high across the board: 66% of the general workforce, rising to 85% among healthcare workers and 90% among retail workers. But what respondents want isn’t necessarily the technology itself; it’s the reassurance it provides. As one worker put it: “The important thing would be knowing that the response would actually be quick and reliable.” Another added that having clear, accessible routes to report a concern “would actually go a long way in ensuring the safety of workers”.

Tools like lone worker alarms work best as part of a wider culture of support, not a replacement for adequate staffing or a responsive line manager, but a way of guaranteeing that help is genuinely and rapidly reachable in the moments identified throughout the research as the riskiest: isolation, lone working, late hours, and situations that escalate unexpectedly. 

Technology, like the service offered by Peoplesafe, can provide reassurance and act as a form of monitored support, but it cannot substitute for clear procedures or an organisational culture where concerns are taken seriously, enhancing those foundations rather than replacing them.

The takeaway for employers
The findings point to four practical priorities. First, make help visible and reliable, particularly for lone or isolated work, with clear routes to support and a rapid, trained response. 

Second, reduce isolation itself, through staffing levels, lone working policy, and meaningful support after an incident occurs. 

Third, improve transparency: make it genuinely easy to raise a concern, close the feedback loop so employees know what happened as a result, and keep an open, ongoing dialogue about safety rather than treating it as a one-off reporting exercise. 

Fourth, and perhaps most importantly, start measuring perceptions of safety directly, by asking employees how safe they feel, where and when that changes, what they do differently as a result, and what would improve it, rather than relying on incident counts alone.

None of this is about pretending workplaces are more dangerous than they are; 92% of workers do feel safe, most of the time. It’s about recognising that the remaining moments aren’t a rounding error. They’re shaping how people work, whether they take on shifts, and whether they stay in their roles at all. For safety professionals, that reframes the job: not just preventing incidents but understanding and closing the gap between what gets reported and what employees are quietly adapting to every day.

The numbers at a glance

• 92% feel safe at work generally – but 51% felt unsafe at least once in the past year
• 40% changed their behaviour or working situation because of safety concerns
• 23% say feeling unsafe hurt their productivity; 29% say it affected their mental wellbeing
• 16% turned down work opportunities; 7% took time off, as a direct result of feeling unsafe
• 16% have considered leaving their employer; 11% have considered leaving their profession entirely
• Healthcare workers: 74% felt unsafe in the past year vs 51% generally; 45% reported a productivity impact; 52% a wellbeing impact
• Retail workers: 66% felt unsafe in the past year; 37% reported a wellbeing impact; 29% would accept more shifts if they felt safer.

The Peoplesafe research can be found at:
peoplesafe.co.uk

For more information see:
peoplesafe.co.uk
linkedin.com/company/peoplesafe-ltd/

Naz Dossa is CEO of Peoplesafe.