We've all been there – slogging through week by week, waiting for the month - no, the quarter, or even the year to just... well, be over with. If you're feeling the blues on your team, whether it be from being overworked, under appreciated or both – it doesn't have to be this way. Your team could start a culture of appreciation and feedback, a culture of giving "kudos" to each other to chip away at the stale feeling of logging into Slack each day and keeping yourself constantly glued to the screen. We take a look below at how to setup your very own kudos culture in a matter of just minutes. So... what are you waiting for? Let's dive in!

Step #1  

Go to https://getculturebot.com and install CultureBot (or simply click the button below). This is the app you'll need to admin kudos-giving fun

From here, you'll go through a few quick installation screens. Don't worry - CultureBot is safe to install and only you are currently seeing it inside your Slack workspace. You can add other admins down the line if you need to as well. Now... let's move to the next step!

Step #2

Now we're jamming. Once you get back into Slack, you'll land on the CultureBot home page. Here is where the magic happens. Scroll down on this homepage until you see the "Shoutouts & Peer Rewards" section...

Now, there's a lot on this page in regards to setting up how you exactly want shoutouts to run, but we won't need to cover this all right now. We want to show you the quickest path to sending a shoutout. To do this, you have two options:

1. Click the "Give Shoutout" (kudos) button you see in the screen below
2. Go to a Slack channel of your choosing > type in "/shoutout" > Boom! that's it, you're on to the third and final step to sending your first shoutout. Look at you! Let's go!

Step #3

The last step is to fill out the screen that is presented to you after you have typed in the shoutout command or clicked the shoutout button. This screen is going to ask you for the "type" of shoutout (fairly self-explanatory, this is basically what you would like to praise someone about/for). For example, type "welcome" is good for new hires you want to greet, "fantastic effort" is a good choice for someone you want to acknowledge their hard work on, and type "fast learner" is awesome for someone who is new to the team and ramping up quickly. That being said, you can actually customize these types to be anything you desire – even your company values (more on this below)!

Lastly, choose who to give your shoutout to (this can be one or multiple people), a channel to send in (defaults to the channel you're already in), and a message. Click send and you'll see a kudos message like the one at the top of this post.

Additional Kudos Options

Now that you're a kudos sending expert – what's next? Well, with CultureBot you can do a lot of fun stuff with your kudos "administering", including:

• Setting up a points system where teammates can give points to each other to exchange in return for gifts (that you also setup)
• The ability to cap the number of points per month employees can give, as well as set a maximum number of points per kudos/shoutout shared
• An option to hide all the generic kudos/shoutouts, and just see the custom ones you've added (again, we recommend matching these up with your company values)
• and... one very special feature...

Kudos / Shoutout Day

Kudos/ Shoutout Day is a brand new feature inside CultureBot that allows you to make a whole day out of sharing positive feedback. This is a great thing to look at implementing after you've gotten used to the basics of kudos / shoutouts sharing with the slash command. This is useful for when you want to take participation up a notch. So... how does it work?

In a nutshell, it lets you configure a series of reminder messages to prompt your team to send shoutouts throughout a day of your choice (note: we recommend Friday, not only is Friday a great day of the week, it's also the day when team morale is most likely to be at its highest - and the team can also use it to reflect back on a hard week of work done).

You can setup 3 reminder on kudos / shoutout day...

1. Kickoff Messsage

The kickoff message is the first message of the day and can be fully customized to however you choose (note: the points/gifts part is optional, and can easily be excluded by the settings shown above). Easy access is given to send kudos - employees just have to click 'send shoutout' on the message from CultureBot inside Slack.

2. Middle of Day Message

The middle of the day message is meant to keep things rolling, and catch those drifters who are too face down in their work to share kind thoughts with their team... but... not for long! They too have another chance to share.

3. End of Day Message

And lastly... the last ditch message. This is a kind message encouraging any last stragglers to share those words of appreciation.

And... you've done it! You've mastered the art of sending Kudos inside Slack and you've only taken all of 6 minutes to read this blog article. We cannot wait to see what you are able to do and how you are able to improve your team's culture for the better with Kudos inside CultureBot. If you have any questions on the tool at all, do not hesitate to reach out - we are here to help (:

Cheers,
Amy