Craig Sixta is the Chief Technology Officer at Element Technologies, a national managed service provider headquartered in Minnesota. Element's crew is fully remote and distributed across the United States — which states, exactly, Sixta admits he doesn't recall. Geographically, anyway. Virtually, they're right at home in the general channel on Microsoft Teams, where their people-first culture uses HeyTaco every day.
The anti-rollout peer recognition strategy
Element has achieved what most organizations seek from employee recognition: participation so natural and peer-driven that it feels like it was their idea. It was sort of by design.
"Don't implement and say you will be giving out five tacos a day," Sixta advises. "Just start doing it yourself, and people catch on." The team "discovered" HeyTaco once he started judiciously distributing his daily taco allotment — he admits he's a little stingy with his share.
No instructions, no prodding, absolutely nothing in the way of a formal launch. Introducing HeyTaco this way is what's made recognition at Element feel flipped on its axis. Sixta says it truly does feel bottom-up, not top-down.
Amplifying a positive remote work culture
Element's anti-rollout happened more than seven years ago, when the team was still working from an office. "We knew how to have fun already," Sixta says. "Adding tacos just kind of amplified it."
That held true when they went fully remote. There's constant recognition running through their tech team's channel, where you can barely get a word in edgewise among the taco-sharing.
Sixta is clear that HeyTaco wasn't an attempt to change an existing culture. It's used to maintain and enhance one that's made the switch to remote work. "If you've got a positive culture, it just streamlines everything."
Late-night celebrations and simple rituals
Sixta is hesitant to describe his remote team's culture as silly, settling on "a bit of a silly culture." HeyTaco provides some much-needed levity on stressful shifts. Over the years, Element has resolved more than a million tickets and saved client companies more than $40 million in incident response.
On those longer, high-stakes days, the team congratulates one another with tiny tacos. "We get a little punch drunk and goofy by the end of those," Sixta says.
Element also uses HeyTaco's leaderboards the way many other teams do — to reward top givers and receivers. Gift cards for real tacos are a common prize, but the team isn't really incentivized to use HeyTaco for that reason. The act of recognition outranks any possibility of a reward.
There are informal, unstructured rituals around recognition too. New hires can expect their coworkers to welcome them with showers of tacos, quickly initiating them into Element's cultural customs.
"It's not that we weren't complimenting each other before, but this has become such an easy vehicle to give each other kudos... It's dead simple to implement."
Craig SixtaRecognition that doesn't try too hard
We've all been told to lead by example countless times. Recognition that sticks, culture that feels real, and core values that actually mean something depend on it. Craig Sixta and the team at Element are proof of that.
Instead of trying to force tighter connections during a remote transition, they held fast to what was already working — peer recognition that feels light and fun.
Send your first tacos for free this week, don't say a word, and see how quickly it catches on.