# Introducing the 7 Rs of workplace culture

- **Episode:** [15](https://agents.truthliesandwork.com/episodes/15.md) (2022-12-06)
- **Type:** intro
- **Tags:** workplace-culture, 7-rs, culture-framework
- **Time:** 3:12–9:48 (start 192s)
- **Listen:** [https://truthliesandwork.com/15?t=192](https://truthliesandwork.com/15?t=192)

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[3:12] Stephan Wiedner: Yeah
[3:14] Leanne Elliott: So I think just to give it a little bit of context, when we look at kind of psychological research within organisations, there's lots of overlap between wellbeing, employee engagement, and culture. So what we want to do here at along with is create a very comprehensive tool that can capture all of those things, that employees, business leaders have influence and power over, they can make changes in their business, but then they can also see the measurable impacts on employee attitudes, behaviour, and performance. So yeah, there are 7 foundations within a business that will promote wellbeing, that will promote employee engagement, and all the performance benefits that come with that. We've called it the RX7, And that's because our 7 areas all begin with R. And I was very excited when this turned out to be the case, completely accidentally
[4:02] Al Elliott: To be honest, I think one of them I made you change to begin with R, but the rest of the other 6 did. I mean, I put the Al in alliteration, I think. Anyway, shall we crack on with those 7 then?
[4:11] Leanne Elliott: Yes. Shall I, shall I list the 7 first? Yes, that's a good idea
[4:14] Al Elliott: Yeah
[4:15] Leanne Elliott: So we have Reason, Recognition, Resources, Role, Relationships, Resilience, and Remote
[4:24] Al Elliott: Lovely. So let's go through those, those 7. And just, just to reiterate, these are what we found from our research, or Leanne's research, really. I've just written bits of it, is that they're the 7 foundations to make an amazing workplace culture of employee engagement and performance
[4:40] Leanne Elliott: And wellbeing
[4:42] Al Elliott: And wellbeing
[4:42] Leanne Elliott: Yeah. Absolutely. So, yeah, reason, the first one. So this is really providing, and I, I, I like to start each of these kinda definitions with providing because as a leader, I can provide this within the organisation. It's not entirely It's tangible, it's not, you know, how do we do this? I provide this as a leader. So, reason, I provide leading engagement with a clear mission that not only I connect with and I'm excited about as a leader, but that my employees connect with both on a professional and a personal level. So, the second is recognition. That's providing an environment that's based on fairness, representation, and appreciation. The third is resources. That's providing manageable workloads, adequate training for people to do the job that they're currently in, and ongoing development opportunities as well. The 4th is role. So, this is role clarity in terms of the current role. So, what are my responsibilities? Clarity over future roles. Do I have a clear path within the organisation, or indeed externally to the organisation? Freedom in work practices. So, this isn't having to do everything exactly the same way. all the time, I have some autonomy within my role. And then also just mutual respect between leaders and employees in terms of, I have a role within this organisation, and therefore I have some control over what that looks like. The 5th is relationships. So, this is providing information and support to employees through yourself as a leader, through your managers, and harnessing and nurturing that support in peer relationships as well. 6th is resilience. And this is really providing opportunities for employees to build their resilience, and critically, to, you know, the time and space to emotionally and physically recover from work, particularly in frequently changing environments, which is basically just business today, right? And then finally, remote. So, remote's interesting. And pre-pandemic, we were working with clients, on employee engagement and wellbeing, and looking at remote work as something that we believe was driving employee engagement, so it's contributing to positive employee engagement and wellbeing within the business. What we've kind of found in our research post-pandemic, and this is early post-pandemic, so it might change, why we need to always keep an eye on these things. What we're finding is that employee engagement and wellbeing is affected by remote or hybrid work as a workplace arrangement, either negatively or positively, depending on the conditions within the organisation as they currently are. So, what it's basically saying is it's a moderating factor
[7:32] Al Elliott: Mm-hmm
[7:33] Leanne Elliott: So, if your other 6 Rs are doing really well, then more than likely remote work or hybrid work, whatever that looks like for you, is going to work really well, because you've created this environment to facilitate remote work. Equally, if there are some kind of hotspot risk areas, in your organization, then they're probably gonna be related to certain struggles with remote work. So currently, we're finding that remote is a moderator of the previous 6, but that is the— those are the 7 foundations, and that is the RX7
[8:04] Al Elliott: Definitely. Now, you'll be hearing, I'm sure, a lot more about that in the new year. I'm not gonna give you any spoilers, but the whole point of this is, I think, that you're going to— you get these things in place, And basically, as long as you do these 7 things, or get these 7 things scoring highly, you've got yourself a decent workplace culture. Now, I think what you said before was that one of the most, or you were talking about one of the most important beliefs, and that's why we've got our guest on today
[8:30] Leanne Elliott: Yeah, so, so the important thing about looking at culture, employee engagement, wellbeing, is to look at it as a predictive model, and something that you can measure. So, all of our 7s in our RX7, each of those can be measured and linked to a specific positive belief or behaviour that employees might have about the organisation. And that, in turn, is going to translate into individual benefits, such as wellbeing, performance, fulfilment, but also business benefits. Like I said before, this has to be commercially sustainable as well. And what we found is that these positive behaviours and beliefs translate into high revenue, higher profitability, and faster growth, to name a few
[9:19] Al Elliott: So, in short, you need this if you want to scale, if you want to maybe exit, maybe you want to get investment, you need this
[9:27] Leanne Elliott: Absolutely. And, you know, to kind of lead in and segue nicely into today's guest, one of the most important beliefs that can be held by employees in engaging work environment and that boosts wellbeing pretty much exponentially is something called psychological safety