Culture
Psycological Safety, Trust & DEI
For most employees, a good work culture is a very important factor when deciding to join or stay in an organisation. But how to create such a good culture can still be mysterious to some. Luckily, thanks to the Leadership Apprenticeship that I took in 2025, I now have a deeper understanding and expertise in the matter.
It all starts with psychological safety. When employees feel safe at work to share their opinions, take risks but also challenge others, organisation can really capitalise on their full potential. It might sound obvious, but I’ve experienced numerous situations and work relationships where psychological safety was lacking and the consequences were dire. There are methods and tools to measure and increase psychological safety, something I spent a lot of effort in my role as UX Director at Ocado.
Trust is also paramount for any team to succeed. Only when team members trust each other can they collaborate successfully, keep each other accountable and challenge each other’s decisions. Here again, there are ways to measure and increase trust in a team/org.
Finally, diversity of thought is one of the best assets organisations can use in today’s global context. This is when Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) play a key part in fostering the right environment to escape group-thinking and unilateral decision-making. Here again, I now have the tools to measure and take action if needed.
Psychological safety, Trust and DEI are never fully mastered. They need constant attention and investment from leaders and organisations, something I’m committed to always working on.
O!UX Conference
O!UX Conference
In 2022, I started a new initiative to bring the entire UX community of Ocado Tech (90+ people) together. Because we’re embedded in our product streams, this structure tend to creates silos, and I wanted to break those to foster a better UX culture. That’s how O!UX is born.
Across two days, we had a variety of talks and activities to bring UX closer, learn new things and simply have fun together. The event was a huge success, with talks on topics like accessibility and strategy, workshops on design trends and social activities like UX Bingo or the award ceremony, recognising achievements from some of our team members.
Since then, O!UX is an annual event everybody looks forward to.
UX Days
Another idea I found useful to foster team cohesion, a sense of belonging and an opportunity to have fun as a team while delivering innovative ideas to the business is through our so-called UX Days. I would organise them quartlerly and the recipe is pretty simple:
The whole team would need to attend in person
I would pick up a challenge that’s linked to ongoing or future business goals/priorities
Designers and researchers would be split into teams to work on the challenges assigned to them
At the end of the day, I would have a judging panel (senior Product/Engineering peers) judging their ideas and a winner would be crowned
Finally, we’d celebrate with a social and some well-deserved drinks/snacks
These fun challenges might sound trivial, but they allowed us to step away from the day-to-day grind and think creatively. They were also the perfect way to create new relationships between team members who don’t necessarily work together. They enabled us to build trust. Totally worth it.
