The Saskatchewan Roughriders, one of the Canadian Football League’s most storied franchises and the reigning 2025 Grey Cup champions, have successfully transformed their talent acquisition and people operations through the strategic implementation of Workable, an advanced Applicant Tracking System (ATS). This move has not only streamlined their recruitment processes but also empowered their lean human resources team to manage significant applicant volumes, standardize evaluations, and provide quantifiable data to executive leadership, marking a pivotal shift in how professional sports organizations approach talent management.
A Legacy of Community and the Imperative for Modern HR
The Saskatchewan Roughriders stand as a unique entity in professional sports, distinguished by their community-owned structure. Unlike many privately held franchises, the Roughriders’ deep-rooted connection to their province is not merely cultural but structural, fostering an extraordinary level of fan loyalty. This bond was vividly demonstrated following their 2025 Grey Cup victory, which alone generated an astounding $13 million in merchandise revenue from a province of just over one million people—a testament to a fan base whose reach extends far beyond Saskatchewan’s borders. This profound community engagement translates into high expectations for organizational excellence, including in talent management.
Overseeing all people operations for this iconic club is Kim Gallagher, Director of Talent Management and People Operations. As the first dedicated HR professional in the history of the Canadian Football League, Gallagher’s role is pioneering. With 15 years dedicated to the organization, she leads a compact two-person team responsible for an extensive remit, from executive hiring to managing a high-volume annual internship program. The organization employs approximately 80 salaried, year-round staff, a figure that swells by an additional 100 hourly roles during the football season. These positions span diverse departments including accounting, marketing, creative, and digital production, with the internship program adding a significant layer of high-volume recruitment each year. The inherent complexity of managing such varied staffing needs, alongside the intense scrutiny typical of a beloved public institution, underscores the critical need for robust and efficient HR systems.
Navigating the Challenges of Traditional Recruitment: The Pre-Workable Era
Prior to adopting Workable, the Roughriders’ recruitment landscape was characterized by a series of escalating inefficiencies. For two years, the team utilized Teamworks Online, a system that followed an even earlier era of entirely inbox-based hiring. While Teamworks offered basic functionality, it introduced considerable friction at virtually every stage of the recruitment process, hindering the agility and precision required by a growing organization.
Kim Gallagher candidly described the previous system as "chunky," highlighting the difficulties in managing processes and providing clear visibility for hiring managers. This friction had tangible consequences for her small HR team. Manually posting job roles across multiple platforms, including specialized local boards like SAS Jobs, was a time-consuming endeavor that quickly compounded for a team of one or two individuals. Furthermore, the absence of a visual recruitment pipeline meant that tracking candidate progress was arduous, making it challenging to ensure hiring managers were keeping pace with evaluations and feedback. This created bottlenecks, slowed down hiring cycles, and risked compromising the candidate experience, which is paramount for an organization deeply embedded in its community. The Roughriders recognized an urgent need for a solution specifically designed for their operational style: lean, fast, and intuitive enough to be easily adopted by hiring managers without extensive training.
The Strategic Choice: Why Workable Aligned with Roughriders’ Needs
The decision to transition to Workable emerged from discussions at the league level, which prompted Kim Gallagher to explore the platform’s capabilities. What she discovered was a solution that perfectly matched the Roughriders’ organizational scale, providing robust features without the prohibitive overhead and unnecessary complexity often associated with enterprise-level systems. "With being a small organization, it was tough to find a system that matched our size as opposed to implementing a massive program with all the bells and whistles we weren’t even going to utilize," Gallagher explained, articulating a common challenge for mid-sized organizations seeking advanced HR technology.
Two key features definitively sealed the decision for Workable. Firstly, the platform’s visual pipeline offered a significant upgrade. The ability to clearly see candidates moving through defined stages of the recruitment process provided an intuitive and comprehensive overview, a stark contrast to their previous fragmented experience. This visual clarity was crucial for both the HR team and hiring managers to quickly grasp the status of any recruitment drive. Secondly, Workable’s multi-board job posting capability addressed a critical pain point. For a small team, the manual effort required to post roles individually across numerous relevant job boards, including specific regional platforms, consumed an inordinate amount of time. Workable consolidated this into a single, efficient action. Gallagher emphasized, "The time it takes to go to each one of those boards as a one-to-two person team is massive. Being able to spread our ad as far as possible from one place was a big decision maker." This efficiency not only saved valuable time but also expanded the reach of job postings, attracting a broader and more diverse pool of candidates.
Seamless Transition and Rapid Adoption: "Like Flipping a Switch"
The implementation of Workable at the Saskatchewan Roughriders was remarkably smooth, described by Kim Gallagher as "like flipping a switch." A primary concern ahead of the rollout was ensuring seamless integration with the Roughriders’ existing website, allowing candidates to transition effortlessly into the new hiring pipeline. This transition was handled without any disruption. The old system remained operational briefly to finalize existing postings, while all new roles were launched through Workable from day one.
Perhaps the most striking aspect of the implementation was the minimal onboarding required. The platform’s intuitive design meant that hiring managers could navigate it independently. Gallagher noted, "It was so user friendly that you could just figure it out. Everything was right there on the screen." This ease of use extended even to senior leadership. When the CEO served as a hiring manager for a recent search, no additional instruction was needed; they were simply added to the job, given access, and participated in the process without requiring support from HR. This rapid and widespread adoption underscored Workable’s user-centric design, validating the Roughriders’ choice for a solution that truly aligned with their lean operational model.
Elevating Evaluation and Collaboration: Nuance and AI-Powered Efficiency
With Workable fully integrated, the Roughriders have significantly standardized and enhanced their candidate evaluation process. Scorecards are now universally applied across all searches, with hiring managers mandated to rate every candidate. A recent upgrade, moving from a binary "thumbs up/thumbs down" system to a nuanced five-star rating scale – a suggestion from their Workable account executive, Nick – made an immediate and profound difference. "Life-changing. Sometimes you’re just not quite sure. Our hiring managers loved having that nuance," Gallagher remarked, highlighting how this seemingly small change fostered more thoughtful and consistent candidate assessments.
The platform’s AI screening capability also quickly became an invaluable tool, particularly in the aftermath of the Grey Cup win when application volumes surged. The AI intelligently pre-screens applicants, allowing the HR team to prioritize top matches. Gallagher found this feature particularly useful: "I would sort by match percentage and start with the 100% ones first – almost like a warm lead. I got through all the applicants, but when you’re tight for time and the volume is that high, it helps to know where to start." This capability ensures that no potential top candidate is missed, even amidst overwhelming applicant flows, while simultaneously optimizing the recruiter’s time.
Customized application questions further refined the screening process. The team strategically uses these questions to clarify critical details, such as work authorization for Canadian roles, which acts as a meaningful filter given the frequent misperception among international applicants regarding Canadian employment eligibility. Additionally, these questions are utilized to request portfolio links for creative roles or, in a more unique application, audition tape links from mascot candidates. Gallagher underscored the strategic intent behind these questions: "We don’t use questions to screen people out, but they tell us a lot about who’s serious and who’s mass applying." This approach enhances the quality of applications and helps identify genuinely engaged candidates.
Data-Driven Decisions: Reporting That Earns a Seat at the Table
One of the most significant operational transformations since implementing Workable has been Kim Gallagher’s enhanced ability to quantify and communicate the impact of her team’s work to executive leadership. The platform’s reporting features are remarkably user-friendly and robust. "The reporting is so easy. You click and the stuff shows up. What I like is that it’s already prepopulated – you don’t have to build it from scratch or risk selecting one wrong criterion and getting an empty report," Gallagher noted. This ease of access to reliable data has been transformative.
The candidate pipeline report has become a particular favorite, offering a clear, comprehensive view of total interviews conducted, messages exchanged, and overall pipeline movement over time. When Gallagher recently extracted data for an executive presentation, it revealed over 900 messages exchanged with candidates within a specific period. This concrete figure powerfully communicates the sheer volume and meticulous care invested by the HR team, translating their efforts into metrics that leadership can immediately appreciate and act upon. This newfound ability to present data-driven insights elevates HR from a purely administrative function to a strategic partner within the organization.
The Roughriders’ acclaimed internship program, built on the mission of providing students with vital professional experience, benefits immensely from this enhanced visibility. Workable’s reporting allows Gallagher to document not just the number of interns hired but, more importantly, how many students received the invaluable experience of an interview with a professional sports organization. This metric goes beyond mere hiring numbers, capturing the program’s profound community impact and its alignment with the organization’s broader social responsibility goals. As Gallagher articulates, "We like to do as many interviews as we can. Even though we can only hire so many students, being interviewed by the Roughriders – that itself is something." This ability to articulate the qualitative impact through quantitative data strengthens the program’s value proposition to executive leadership and the community.
Unwavering Reliability: A Cornerstone of Candidate Experience
The Roughriders leverage Workable for every stage of the candidate journey, from initial outreach and interview scheduling to offer letters and beyond. This consistent use of a single platform is not incidental; it is a deliberate choice driven by the platform’s proven reliability. This unwavering trust in deliverability has fundamentally reshaped the team’s operational protocols.
Gallagher recounts a recent instance where a hiring manager wished to meet two candidates for an informal coffee. Rather than using personal email, Gallagher still routed the outreach through Workable. This decision was rooted in the understanding that consolidating all communications within one platform is beneficial for both the HR team’s record-keeping and, crucially, for the candidates themselves. "When I make an offer and tell a candidate it will come through Workable, you can hear the relief. They know the message is going to arrive. It gives them peace of mind," Gallagher observed. This level of reliability cultivates trust and enhances the overall candidate experience, reinforcing the Roughriders’ commitment to professionalism and transparency. In a competitive talent market, particularly in high-profile industries like professional sports, a seamless and trustworthy communication channel can be a significant differentiator.
Recruiting Without Boundaries: The Power of the Mobile App
As the Roughriders navigate one of their busiest hiring periods in a decade, Kim Gallagher has heavily relied on Workable’s mobile app to maintain her pace, often managing two roles simultaneously as a team of one. The app provides critical flexibility, enabling her to manage recruitment tasks from anywhere, at any time. "We have more jobs open right now than I’ve seen in 10 years. The mobile app is allowing me to keep up. It gives me a lot of flexibility and I can work from anywhere," she affirmed.
The mobile app’s accessibility to saved templates means that crucial candidate follow-ups, which might otherwise be delayed until the next morning, can be sent in real-time. For high-volume tasks like intern interviews, the self-scheduling feature, complete with built-in buffer time between calls, has become an indispensable tool. This feature allows for efficient scheduling without compromising the quality or individual attention given to each conversation, a critical balance when managing hundreds of applicants. The mobile app truly empowers the HR team to maintain recruiting continuity, irrespective of their physical location, proving essential for an organization with dynamic and often unpredictable staffing demands.
A Resounding Endorsement: Workable as a Foundational HR Solution
Without hesitation, the Saskatchewan Roughriders unequivocally recommend Workable. For professional sports organizations grappling with the inherent complexities of year-round operations, coupled with the high-volume demands of seasonal and internship hiring, Workable offers a rare combination: a platform robust enough to scale with growth, yet intuitive enough that anyone—from a first-time intern manager to a CEO acting as a hiring manager—can utilize it effectively from day one.
For Kim Gallagher, who has dedicated 15 years to building the HR infrastructure at the Roughriders and has played a pioneering role in professionalizing the HR function across the entire CFL, this combination is far more than a "nice-to-have." It is the fundamental bedrock upon which all other talent management and people operations initiatives are built. Workable has not only resolved immediate operational inefficiencies but has also strategically positioned the Saskatchewan Roughriders to continue attracting top talent, fostering an exceptional employee experience, and maintaining their enduring legacy as a leader both on and off the field. The adoption of such advanced HR technology by a community-owned, storied franchise like the Roughriders serves as a compelling case study and a benchmark for other sports organizations looking to modernize their talent acquisition strategies in an increasingly competitive landscape.
