How to Start Building an Employee Recognition Program in 2 Simple and Free Steps

We talk to a lot of people every day who are considering using HeyTaco for their recognition program. While HeyTaco certainly makes peer-to-peer recognition systematic, sustainable, and fun, we often end up talking with leaders about the importance of building a culture of appreciation. When adding any new tool, you are commonly building a new habit, and changing human behavior isn’t easy. But, it isn’t hard either - it simply takes time and energy. So, if you are starting from ground 0 when it comes to appreciation and want to make a change ASAP, read on.

There are two simple and free ways you can start building a culture of appreciation TODAY:

1. Create a channel in your communication tool (Slack, Microsoft Teams, etc.) where people can share their appreciation with others. Name it #appreciation, #gratitude, #shoutouts - anything that resonates with your team. A separate place dedicated to teammates recognizing each other will allow everyone to share their appreciation AND see others’ appreciations. Seeing our teammates recognize each other has a positive effect on everyone involved, not just the giver and receiver of gratitude. 
2. Add ‘Appreciations’ as an agenda item to your All Company meetings. You can either have someone read the highlights from your new #appreciations channel and/or you can have people share new appreciations publicly. This provides another, more public and synchronous forum for people to recognize others, and reinforces the importance of sharing appreciation. 

Every new habit takes time, 21 days some say, but it also takes seeing our progress. It is fun to share appreciation in our company channel, but the added highlight with the whole company reinforces its importance to everyone. You get what you inspire, and to inspire gratitude takes no money - just some energy and persistence. 

And if you want to make it extra fun, consider adding a taco flavor to it by adding HeyTaco to that celebration channel ;)