Want to make more money in the stock market? Invest in companies where employees aren't afraid to speak their minds. It pays out big.
March 27, 2026
Original Paper
The Fearless Premium: Workplace Psychological Safety and Stock Returns
SSRN · 6391618
The Takeaway
We often treat workplace culture as a 'soft' HR metric, but this study shows it is a powerful, unpriced market signal. Because investors don't yet account for the innovation boost caused by 'fearless' employees, these companies consistently produce positive earnings surprises that lead to higher stock prices.
From the abstract
Organizational research identifies psychological safety-the shared belief that employees can speak up with ideas, questions, or mistakes without fear of negative consequences-as a critical driver of learning, innovation, and team performance. Despite its prominence in the organizational sciences, little is known about its implications for firm value and asset prices. Using textual employee reviews from Glassdoor, we construct a novel firm-level measure of psychological safety (PS) by combining l