Recognition tripled in one year

In mid-2020, Duke University Medical Center's Internal Medicine residency program was facing a crisis. Emotional exhaustion was rising as physicians navigated fears about health risks and career impacts. Social isolation made an already demanding environment even harder. Leadership knew they needed to find new ways to keep people connected — and recognized.

Recognition that required too much effort

Before HeyTaco, the program's recognition system worked like this: if you wanted to acknowledge a colleague, you emailed the Program Director, who would then include the kudos in the weekly newsletter. It was well-intentioned, but the friction was real. As the team reflected, "less kudos were likely shared given the time and energy it takes to send an email to the Program Director."

The barrier wasn't will — it was workflow. Physicians were already stretched thin. A multi-step recognition process was easy to skip, even when gratitude was genuinely felt.

A community-first response to burnout

Leadership looked for a way to lower that barrier. Acknowledging the stress their trainees were facing and the reality of social isolation, they sought to increase feelings of accomplishment and foster community. HeyTaco offered instant, frictionless peer recognition — no email required, no waiting for the next newsletter.

The question was whether digital, real-time recognition could meaningfully change behavior among medical professionals. The first year's data gave an answer.

The results

Recognition messages tripled — from about 300 kudos emailed to the Program Director in the year before, to more than 900 HeyTaco messages in the first year. Established faculty saw the largest gains of any group. Recognition that used to wait for the weekly newsletter now happened between peers, in real time.

The lesson from Duke is straightforward: when recognition is hard, people do it less. When it's easy, they do it more. In one of the most demanding environments imaginable, a small change in workflow went hand in hand with three times as much recognition.