Waffles, Wrestlers, & Walls of Karma

Since the launch of Disco, we’ve had the privilege of helping over 30,000 teams celebrate their achievements daily within Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Google HangoutsChat.

That’s a ton of celebrating, so we felt it was only appropriate to take a moment to highlight a couple of the trophies, icons, and rituals that teams share to bring their recognition initiatives to life!

The following are three of our favorites, and the story behind them.

Casper runs on “Naps and Waffles”

Casper, the company that redefined how mattresses are engineered and purchased, believes that the combination of recognition and delicious breakfast food is the key to fostering a healthy culture.

Casper employees covet the “Golden Waffle”, which is given to employees who exhibit the company’s core values. Employees are nominated by managers and peers to receive these prestigious and crispy honors, which are accompanied by a physical golden waffle trophy during company-wide all-hands meetings.

Casper takes their waffles seriously. If you don’t believe me, check out their blog series titled ‘Waffle Crush Wednesday’, where they review and rate some of the hottest waffle spots in the country. They even have a concept called a ‘Snooze Bar’, where Casper customers have the chance to take a nap and enjoy homemade waffles.

Mixpanel's "closing move"

In sales and in professional wrestling, closers are celebrated. At the product analytics company, Mixpanel, the sales team combined the best of both worlds to honor their undisputed sales heavyweights.

Each week, Mixpanel sales executives that hit key milestones are put on the highest pedestal, by having their faces superimposed upon the body of one of the WWF’s greatest - Jake the Snake Roberts.

On the sales floor, a lifesize Jake the Snake ‘Fat Head’ overlooks the team. It’s almost as if you can feel the presence of ‘The Snake’.

Credit Karma gives cred (where cred is due)

Credit is serious business. Karma is also serious business. As you can imagine, the team at Credit Karma handles both masterfully.

To demonstrate their commitment to employee recognition, Credit Karma created a program that allows employees to ‘give cred’ to their peers when they see employees living Credit Karma’s core values.

Every month peers are recognized and nominated for the “Karmanaut” award, a physical trophy that employees display proudly on their desks. Additionally, there are screens on the walls of their offices where all recognized Karmanauts have their photos displayed for the month.

These were just a couple of our favorites. If your company has its own that you’d like to share, we’d love to hear from you! Drop me a note at justin@justdisco.com.

And if your team is looking for inspiration and an easy and effortless way to recognize your employees, check out Disco!