How Right at Home Boston Turned a Recognition Movement into a Referral Engine
Executive Summary
Right at Home Boston has always understood the importance of recognizing their valued caregivers. But as their organization scales, ensuring teams are rewarded for the great work they do in a timely manner requires innovation. Without adding any additional work to their management teams’ plate, Right at Home Boston partnered with Caribou to reimagine their rewards program through automation, and achieved standout results across the board.
88
%
200
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88% of Right at Home’s 400+ caregivers have started using Caribou, and 97% of Right at Home’s administrators have used Caribou to send personalized, uplifting recognition messages and rewards points to caregivers to date.
400+ Right at Home caregivers shared jobs via Caribou, and this has resulted in 200 new hires and counting to the Right at Home team. This means Right at Home grew overall caregiver headcount by 35% in just 15 months.
Managers have shared that Caribou has ignited a boost in overall team morale. They also state that they now have more time to invest back into the business’ growth and optimization strategies.
Context
Right at Home is an award-winning home care franchise with an expansive global footprint, with locations across Canada, Australia, China, Ireland and the UK. Founded in 1995, making a positive impact on the lives of many has been the core focus of Right at Home, with founder Alan Hager championing the company’s mission to improve the quality of life for all clients since day one.
One of Right at Home’s franchisees, Right at Home Boston Metro West, provides quality care to thousands of clients across Massachusetts and Maine. With four locations and hundreds of caregivers on their team, Right at Home Boston came to Caribou with a clear, focused objective: make their caregivers feel seen. To do this, they needed to implement a tool that enabled immediate, consistent, and efficient distribution of rewards and recognition, a tall order with a distributed workforce across two states. As Right at Home Boston’s CEO, Rosaleen Doherty, states, “In a world where immediate gratification is everywhere...we needed a recognition program that dealt with the here and now.” Right at Home Boston not only succeeded in their goal to tell deserving caregivers they’re doing a great job - they also saw referrals for qualified caregivers soar, resulting in a massive hiring boost.
Caribou is a way for us to get to people across our entire company, and help them be seen for the great work they do. We know this equates to job satisfaction, and that’s what we are all aiming for with our employees. Thanks to Caribou, we now have a tool in our toolbox that helps us reward our team easily, without extra administrative work.
Rosaleen Doherty
CO-OWNER
Right at Home Boston and North
Recognition is time consuming and relies heavily on manual work
Right at Home has long-understood the power of recognizing their home care aides. To say thanks, they would rely on spreadsheets, papers, and manual distribution of gift cards to their employees. Not only did this process require a heavy logistical lift for managers, it often resulted in long delays for receiving rewards for a job well done. They needed to find ways to automate this process to get rewards into the hands of caregivers faster.
Face-to-face time with distributed caregivers is limited
One of the foremost challenges of employee engagement in the home care space is the fact that supervisors and managers get limited face-to-face time with their caregivers. While automating processes like gift card and reward distribution was key to the success of the program, Right at Home wanted to ensure personalized, timely messages were being sent to their dedicated care staff on a regular basis as well, promising dedicated caregivers felt seen.
The caregiver shortage requires creative referral programs
Finding great caregivers to add to their roster is one of the primary focuses of the Right at Home team. Like many agencies, Right at Home has been impacted by the caregiver shortage, and is always looking for creative, consistent, and effective ways to get open positions infront of qualified caregivers. They strongly believe in the adage that “great people know great people!” and needed to find a way to encourage their team to refer great candidates.
Solutions
Since March 2023, Caribou implemented a variety of solutions to help Right at Home Boston realize its goals.
Staff Recognition
Each coordinator was given a monthly budget to reward caregivers doing exceptional work. Via Caribou, supervisors can now consistently distribute rewards at their discretion, and add a personalized, timely note that says thanks for a job well done.
Integration w/ WellSky
Caribou’s seamless integration with WellSky allowed real-time employee data to be easily captured, ensuring the program could be automated. This reduced manual workload for staff significantly, making spreadsheets and papers for tracking rewards and referrals a thing of the past.
Referral Program
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Rewarding caregivers for their referral efforts at every step of the process was a priority for the Right at Home team. Points were earned for key moments such as job shares, interviewing, training, and reaching retention milestones. Caregivers could earn over $500 additional income per referral.
Weekly Caribou Coaching
Consistent monitoring from Caribou’s team of experts helped optimize performance across the business. Keeping communication channels open allowed Caribou’s team to proactively recommend new features to test and ensured Right at Home had constant visibility on their ROI.
Results
Within the first year, Right at Home Boston saw how powerful implementing a rewards and recognition program with built-in automations could be. The results speak for themselves.
200+
NEW HIRES
200+ New Hires
400+ Right at Home caregivers shared jobs - this has resulted in 200 new hires to the Right at Home team: meaning Right at Home grew overall caregiver headcount by 35% in just 15 months.
88% Caregiver Engagement Rate
88% of Right at Home’s 400+ caregivers have started using Caribou. 97% of Right at Home’s administrators have used Caribou to give personalized recognition messages and reward points to caregivers to date.
88%
APP USAGE
Skyrocketing Team Satisfaction
Managers have shared that Caribou has ignited a boost in overall team morale. They also state that they now have more time to invest back into the business’ growth and optimization strategies, helping the Right at Home mission touch the lives of more people.
Next Frontiers
Right at Home Boston is always looking for ways to improve what they’re doing for both their staff and their clients. As the team experiences exponential growth, maintaining sharp attention to delivering personalized, timely recognition remains a priority. In the coming months, they will be testing automation features that allow supervisors to offer targeted recognition to deserving caregivers, with a measured focus on driving retention for new hires. They’ll also launch a campaign to improve compliance and Electronic Visit Verification, rewarding caregivers for following business-critical compliance guidelines.
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