Shaping culture: Harnessing AI-powered analytics to build stronger workplaces

Modern workplaces can be fast-paced and stressful environments - creating the right workplace and leadership culture is crucial to ensuring the wellbeing of staff and maintaining organisational performance.

Research has shown that when employees feel psychologically safe at work - able to speak up, ask questions, or raise concerns without fear - they are more engaged, more innovative, and less likely to leave.

But creating this type of culture can be challenging.

“Organisations often struggle to build psychological safety because it’s shaped by daily interactions between individuals, not just memos or formal policies” says Dr Emma Clarke, who after a 20+ year career in marketing, completed a PhD in Organisational Psychology in 2024.

“Without consistent leadership behaviours that model openness and a clear shared purpose, attempts to create a safe culture can quickly unravel - especially in high-stress work environments”

A bold vision for workplace transformation

Emma and Headspace Co-founder Andy Hamilton have recently launched a new tech-startup based on Emma’s PhD research which aims to help organisations improve workplace culture, performance, and employee retention by identifying barriers that might be preventing them from building psychological safety.

The goal of the startup is ambitious: build a scalable Data & AI product that empowers organisations to measure and improve psychological safety and employee wellbeing – using feedback, structured HR data, and AI-powered analysis - all while protecting individual privacy and ensuring compliance with GDPR and emerging AI legislation.

“There’s a significant opportunity to create meaningful change in this space,” says Andy. “AI is now firmly on the agenda for HR and executive leaders, particularly when it can help address complex issues like workplace culture, employee retention, and team dynamics.” 

AI-native design

While the project presents complex challenges, it also arrives at an opportune moment. As many organisations grapple with how to integrate AI into existing products and systems, greenfield projects in the burgeoning AI era have a distinct advantage: the ability to take an AI-first approach from the ground up.

Without the burden of legacy infrastructure and processes, new products can be designed with AI at their core - from data architecture to user experience - allowing for smarter, faster, and more targeted insights. In addition, advances in AI-assisted development tools are accelerating the build process itself, enabling small, focused teams to prototype, test, and iterate more rapidly than ever before. For early-stage products, this means a far shorter path from idea to impact.

Modern cloud platforms and foundation models mean that AI capabilities no longer need to be built from scratch. For the Headspace project, this means that ML-based people analytics techniques such as sentiment and text analysis can be rapidly integrated into the product and fine-tuned. AI also enables more dynamic, personalised, and accessible user experiences, with AI-generated summaries, recommendations, insights, and natural language interactions all part of the product roadmap.

Importantly, with AI regulation and data ethics in the spotlight, products designed with privacy, fairness, and compliance in mind from day one are also better positioned for trust, long-term growth, and market differentiation.

Looking ahead

As awareness of psychological safety continues to grow, the need for tools that move beyond surface-level engagement metrics is becoming increasingly clear. Headspace is positioning itself at the intersection of organisational psychology research and cutting edge-AI - offering organisations a way to understand, measure, and improve the conditions that allow people to thrive. 

Headspace is poised to redefine how organisations approach workplace culture - not just as a set of values or aspirations, but as a measurable, manageable driver of wellbeing, innovation and performance.

With the product now moving beyond prototyping, the team is focused on a pilot phase with forward-thinking organisations to test and refine the concept and platform in live customer environments. 

If your organisation would like to be part of this, get in touch!