How Hillendale Turned the Caregiver Experience Into a Growth Strategy
1,100% ROI in 16 months with Caribou
Executive Summary
In February 2025, Hillendale partnered with Caribou to drive engagement and impact across retention, recruitment, and compliance behaviors. As the organization scaled, leadership wanted a program that could keep caregivers consistently engaged while reinforcing the operational behaviors that matter most across home care.
After launching Caribou, the Hillendale team saw:
1,100%
in total program ROI in the first 16 months
3,000
hours saved from automating administrative work
23pp↑
higher 90-day retention among recognized caregivers
Scaling with intention and purpose
Customer Overview
Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, Hillendale Home Care has been supporting families for more than 20 years with personalized home care services built around clarity, confidence, and care that connects.
Hillendale Home Care came to Caribou to support ambitious growth goals while strengthening caregiver engagement across the organization. The team wanted to improve referral hiring, reinforce operational behaviors like EVV compliance, grow retention, and create more opportunities for caregivers to feel recognized and connected to the organization.
Their core objectives were centered around:
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Improving caregiver retention
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Boosting referral-driven hiring
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Increasing participation in engagement initiatives
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Achieving more consistent EVV
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Gathering caregiver feedback at scale
“If our caregivers feel connected to Hillendale, recognized for the work they do, and know we genuinely care about them, they’re going to provide a better experience for our clients. Caribou has helped us scale those touchpoints while freeing our leaders to spend more time with people instead of paperwork.”
Jesse Walters
President & CEO
Hillendale Home Care
Challenges
Like many home care organizations, Hillendale Home Care already understood the connection between caregiver engagement and business outcomes. Prior to Caribou, the organization had an existing rewards and engagement program, but several operational limitations made it difficult to grow participation and measure impact.
Reward redemption was limited to gift cards, while referral tracking required significant manual administration. The team also wanted stronger visibility into referral performance and caregiver engagement outcomes.
As Hillendale Home Care continued to grow, leadership needed a platform that could:
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Keep referral participation consistently active
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Create recognition moments at scale
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Encourage ongoing caregiver participation
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Reduce administrative burden
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Maintain visibility into caregiver sentiment
The organization also believed caregiver engagement should feel unique and memorable. Sustaining participation required more than a rewards program alone; it required consistent campaigns, creative concepts, and recognition moments that caregivers wanted to be part of.
Solutions
HIllendale Home Care implemented Caribou across their entire organization to automate manual work and drive impact for administrators and caregivers with an intuitive software. They built a caregiver engagement strategy focused on referrals, recognition, caregiver feedback, and driving operational efficiency.
Challenge
Referral participation needed to support continued growth
Administrative burden associated with referral management
Need for stronger, more consistent caregiver engagement and recognition
Limited visibility into caregiver feedback
Solution
Personalized campaigns, referral incentives, automated referral tracking
Automated workflows and caregiver self-service visibility
Recognition campaigns, milestone programs, rewards, communications
Caregiver surveys and sentiment collection
Result
386 referral hires from 822 applicants in 16 months with 117,800 hours worked
Time saved on program enabled team to invest in in-person onboarding experience
2,930 moments of direct recognition delivered to care staff
72 caregiver NPS
Referral Program
Referrals became the strongest driver of workforce growth across the organization. Hillendale Home Care continuously introduced new referral campaigns and seasonal engagement initiatives to keep participation high throughout the year. Campaigns like “March Pot of Gold” and “May Smiles and Surprises” created recurring excitement around referrals while helping caregivers stay connected to the program.
Every job share generated a raffle ticket, creating ongoing incentives for caregivers to participate consistently rather than only during periods of urgent hiring demand.
Caribou also streamlined referral administration by giving caregivers visibility into their referral progress, and reducing manual work from administrators to manage the program with easier tracking. Caregivers received direct-to-payroll redemptions for their referral efforts, a critical feature Hillendale Home Care was looking for based on caregiver feedback.
The result was a referral program that remained highly active throughout the year, that saw significant top-line impact on the business, with a projected $2.5 million in organizational value.
Key results
Automation to Power More Human Connections
Hillendale Home Care leveraged Caribou’s personalized communication engine to deliver the right message, to the right caregiver, at the right time.
This meant consistent, personalized engagements were delivered in a timely way, ensuring their team felt seen & valued through celebrating milestones, birthdays, and a job well-done. Surveys allowed the team to gather more feedback across the whole team, providing a clearer picture into the caregiver experience, generating feedback on training, scheduling, and overall happiness.
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As administrative burden decreased, Hillendale Home Care was able to reinvest time into the caregiver experience, including a revamped new-hire orientation. The organization expanded onboarding into a four-to-five-hour experience that includes hands-on skills assessments, caregiver-to-client matching discussions, and practical training using real equipment and scenarios. This guaranteed in-person interaction is crucial for early-stage retention.
Setting the foundation for the future
Hillendale Home Care implemented Caribou to become a core part of its operating system to enable a rewards, recognition and engagement program that would drive impact for the caregiver experience. What began as an initiative to strengthen referrals, recognition, communication, and key operational behaviors has become an important part of how the organization recruits, develops, and retains caregivers at scale.
As Hillendale continues to grow, it plans to expand its partnership with Caribou by leveraging AI-powered capabilities to automate administrative work, strengthen the caregiver experience, and improve workforce operations. By reducing manual tasks, Hillendale’s leaders can spend more time investing in caregivers, supporting clients, and delivering exceptional care.
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