Tips & Tricks for Driving Engagement

Which channel should I add HeyTaco to?

For larger organizations, we recommend having a destination channel - a single place where people can give tacos in. Whether it’s called tacos, praise or gratitude - having a single channel in larger teams enables the taco messages to have their own separate stage.
For smaller teams, we recommend adding HeyTaco to channels where the conversation is happening. This makes it easy for people to give tacos in the moment, and given that your team is smaller, they won’t crowd out the rest of the conversation.

There are so many fun things you can do to introduce HeyTaco to your team. Check out this article for Launch Strategy ideas. If you’d like to chat live about it and brainstorm with us, email us at [email protected]
Taco Tip: Give your tacos away every day to multiple people. The early success of the Taco Economy depends on you (and whoever else is helping drive it) giving their tacos away every day. Pressure is on! :)

Leaderboards are not a performance evaluation tool; rather they are a friendly competition tool to drive engagement. Successful taco economies have one thing in common: they celebrate their givers. Leverage the leaderboard to highlight the Top Givers and celebrate the action everyone on your team can take.
Taco Tip: Set the default leaderboard view to ‘Weekly’ or ‘Monthly’. This will give everyone a chance to start fresh and be on top of the leaderboard for a given time frame.

Celebrate your top givers and receivers. Choose a timeframe and celebrate the top (3) givers and receivers in that particular time frame. Give them Taco Trophies, stickers, taco hats or just have them share a moment of taco fame in front of their team. It feels good to be recognized by our peers, and tacos don’t lie.

Glad you asked! You can look through the Activity page and find fun taco messages that a) are simply fun, b) have the most taco reactions, or c) celebrate behaviors you’d love your team to be about. Bring up those messages at your next team/All-Company meeting and publicly recognize the authors and receivers. No reward necessary, simply leverage HeyTaco to teach and create a culture of gratitude.

Taco tags are open hashtags, similar to social media where people can tag whatever they’d like. There isn’t a way for admins to pre-populate tags for people to choose from from a dropdown menu; people need to type the tags in themselves.
Here are three ideas for using tags to drive engagement. Celebrate people who have been tagged with them in a given month, or quarter.
Taco Tip: there isn’t a way for an admin to pre-populate values for people to choose. People have to write them out themselves. You know why, right? Writing things out helps us remember them.

Pulse surveys are delivered to folks directly from HeyTaco in a direct message. Leverage Pulse to ask people what kind of reward ideas they’d like to see (ie what would they like to spend their tacos on), where would they like to meet up for your next offsite, or simply how happy they are at work this week. The sky's the limit - gain valuable insight or simply have fun using Pulse.

Taco innovation is the key to thriving Taco Economies. Switch things up and create new challenges, rewards and moments.
Engage the whole team by having a collective taco goal in a particular time frame. On your Analytics page, you will see a total taco given amount - leverage it to create a goal for your team to work towards with an eye on a fun celebration or reward at the end. What if your CEO gave a company presentation in a taco costume, or everyone got to enjoy tacos at the office or home after achieving the goal? Let your imagination run wild and have fun as a team filling your taco bank.

Many teams use HeyTaco without rewards. They might not have the budget, or they don’t want to tie rewards with their appreciation and recognition efforts.
Remember, the purpose is to build a culture of gratitude. A culture in which people feel appreciated by their teammates, grateful for the people they get to work with and inspired to be a part of your team. Rewards, just like the leaderboard and tags, are mechanisms you can leverage to build a habit of giving appreciation, which in turn creates a culture of gratitude.
If you choose to have rewards, here are a few simple best practices:

Non monetary > Monetary rewards

Team > Individual rewards

If you need reward ideas, check out this list of rewards we have seen teams have success with, or reach out to us at [email protected]. We’d be happy to brainstorm reward ideas with you live.
Principle of taco innovation applies here as well - switch things up to combat boredom, inflation and predictability. Have fun with new rewards, and ask your teammates what they’d like.