Vi Living at NAHCR 2026: How to Maximize Employee Referrals in Healthcare Hiring
August 10, 2026
Healthcare and senior living recruiters are hiring against the toughest labor market in the country: clinical shortages, high-volume frontline roles, and turnover that never fully settles. At NAHCR 2026, Claudine Trudeau of Vi Living walked the room through what actually moved the needle for her team — a rebuilt employee referral program running on ERIN.
The results, up front
- 36% of hires now come from employee referrals
- 63% employee adoption across the organization
- 1,320 admin hours saved a year managing the program
Four takeaways from Claudine's session
1. A referral program lives or dies on how easy it is to participate
Vi Living's caregivers, dining staff, and nurses are not sitting at a desk. Asking them to log into a portal to submit a referral is asking them not to refer at all. Moving to mobile and SMS-based referrals removed the friction that had been quietly capping participation for years.
2. Communication has to be continuous, not a launch event
Most programs get announced once and then go silent. Claudine's team treats referrals as an ongoing campaign: targeted job pushes to the employees closest to a role, automated nudges, and visible recognition when a referral converts.
3. Bonuses matter — but clarity matters more
Employees refer when they trust the payout will happen. Automated bonus tracking and transparent status updates did more for participation than raising the dollar amount. If you're benchmarking your own structure, start with our employee referral bonus guide.
4. Automation is what protects recruiter time
The 75% reduction in admin work came from removing manual steps: referral intake, status updates, ATS handoff, and bonus approvals all run automatically. That's the difference between a program a recruiting team maintains and one a recruiting team benefits from.
Why this matters for senior living and healthcare teams
Referral hires in healthcare consistently start faster, stay longer, and cost less to source than agency or job-board hires. When a nurse recommends a nurse, you inherit a quality signal no resume screen can produce. That's the core argument Vi Living brought to NAHCR — and the data behind it is in our referral research.