The Saskatchewan Roughriders, one of the Canadian Football League’s most celebrated and community-owned franchises, have significantly transformed their talent acquisition and people operations through the strategic implementation of Workable, an advanced applicant tracking system. This digital overhaul has yielded immediate and measurable improvements across key HR functions, including a substantial increase in candidate volume, enhanced communication reliability, standardized evaluation processes, and unprecedented mobile flexibility, fundamentally reshaping how the reigning 2025 Grey Cup champions manage their human capital.
A Storied Franchise with Unique Operational Demands
The Saskatchewan Roughriders stand apart in the landscape of professional sports. Unlike most teams, the Roughriders are community-owned, a structural distinction that deeply intertwines the organization with its provincial identity. In a province of just over one million residents, this unique model fosters an extraordinary level of fan loyalty, evidenced by a staggering $13 million in merchandise revenue generated solely in the aftermath of their 2025 Grey Cup victory. This fervent support extends far beyond Saskatchewan’s borders, creating a vibrant and engaged ecosystem around the team.
Managing the intricate people operations for this beloved institution is Kim Gallagher, Director of Talent Management and People Operations. As the first dedicated HR professional in the history of the CFL, Gallagher’s role is pioneering and expansive. With 15 years of dedicated service to the organization, she leads a lean, two-person team responsible for everything from executive-level hiring to the oversight of a comprehensive annual internship program. The Roughriders maintain approximately 80 salaried, year-round staff, a number that swells by around 100 additional hourly roles during the football season. This dynamic staffing model encompasses diverse departments, including accounting, marketing, creative services, and digital production, with the internship program adding a consistent layer of high-volume recruitment challenges each year. The inherent fluctuations and the breadth of roles necessitate an HR function marked by exceptional operational precision and adaptability.
Navigating the Pre-Workable Recruitment Landscape
Prior to adopting Workable, the Roughriders’ recruitment efforts were primarily managed through Teamworks Online for two years, following an even earlier era of inbox-based hiring. While Teamworks offered a basic level of functionality, it was fraught with inefficiencies and created significant friction across nearly every stage of the hiring process. Kim Gallagher aptly described the system as "really chunky," highlighting the difficulties in process management and, critically, the lack of clarity for hiring managers attempting to visualize candidate progress.
For a small HR team supporting a growing, community-centric organization, these operational bottlenecks had tangible consequences. The manual effort required to post job roles across multiple platforms individually was a significant time drain, compounding rapidly for a team of only one or two people. Without a visual pipeline, tracking candidate status became a cumbersome task, making it challenging to ensure hiring managers were keeping pace with evaluations and feedback. This lack of centralized visibility often led to delays, potential candidate drop-offs, and an overall less-than-optimal experience for both internal stakeholders and external applicants. The Roughriders recognized an urgent need for a solution tailored to their operational ethos: lean, agile, and intuitive enough to be seamlessly adopted by any hiring manager without extensive training.
Workable Emerges as the Right-Sized Solution
The decision to transition to Workable was a carefully considered one, influenced by broader discussions at the league level. Kim Gallagher’s exploration of the platform’s capabilities quickly revealed a solution that perfectly matched the Roughriders’ scale and specific needs, eschewing the complexities and overhead of larger enterprise systems laden with features they would never utilize. "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.
Two key features decisively sealed the deal for Workable. Firstly, the highly intuitive visual pipeline offered a dramatic improvement. The ability to clearly see candidates moving through well-defined stages represented a significant upgrade from their previous, opaque experience. This visual clarity promised to streamline tracking and foster better collaboration. Secondly, the multi-board job posting capability was a game-changer for the lean HR team. The previous necessity of manually posting roles across every relevant job board, including Saskatchewan-specific platforms like SAS Jobs, consumed an inordinate amount of time. Workable’s ability to consolidate this into a single, efficient action was a powerful driver. "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," Gallagher emphasized, highlighting the immediate return on investment in terms of time savings and expanded reach.
Seamless Integration and Intuitive Adoption
The implementation of Workable was, in Kim Gallagher’s words, akin to "flipping a switch." The transition was remarkably smooth, with minimal disruption to ongoing operations. The primary concern regarding the integration of Workable with the Roughriders’ existing website, ensuring a seamless candidate experience, was handled without issue. The legacy system remained active briefly to finalize existing postings, while all new roles were launched exclusively through Workable from day one.
What truly impressed Gallagher and her team was the minimal onboarding required. The platform’s inherent user-friendliness meant that hiring managers could independently navigate its functionalities. "It was so user friendly that you could just figure it out. Everything was right there on the screen," she noted, underscoring Workable’s intuitive design. This ease of use was dramatically demonstrated when even the CEO, acting as a hiring manager for a recent search, required no additional instruction from HR. They were simply granted access to the job within the platform and participated fully in the recruitment process, a testament to Workable’s accessibility and straightforward interface. This rapid, self-service adoption among senior leadership underscored the platform’s immediate value and efficiency gains.
Revolutionizing Candidate Evaluation and Team Collaboration
With Workable firmly in place, the Roughriders were able to standardize their candidate evaluation processes in ways previously unattainable. Scorecards have become a universal tool across all searches, requiring hiring managers to evaluate every candidate thoroughly. A recent enhancement, suggested by their Workable account executive, Nick, involved upgrading from a simple "thumbs up/thumbs down" system to a nuanced five-star rating scale. This seemingly small change had an immediate and profound impact. "Life-changing. Sometimes you’re just not quite sure. Our hiring managers loved having that nuance," Gallagher remarked, indicating how the more granular rating system facilitated more precise and consistent candidate assessments, fostering better alignment among evaluators.
The AI screening capability also emerged as an invaluable asset, particularly during periods of high application volume, such as the surge experienced after the Grey Cup victory. This feature allowed the HR team to efficiently prioritize top matches without overlooking any applicants. "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," Gallagher explained. This intelligent filtering mechanism ensured that even with hundreds of applications, the team could focus their efforts effectively, enhancing recruitment speed and quality.
Furthermore, customized application questions added another layer of precision to 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 number of international applicants who may misunderstand Canadian immigration requirements. Beyond basic qualifications, custom questions are also employed to request portfolio links for creative roles or, in one of the more unique applications within their hiring pipeline, audition tape links from mascot candidates. Gallagher elaborated on their philosophy: "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 ensures that while the process remains inclusive, it also efficiently identifies genuinely engaged and qualified candidates.
Data-Driven Insights: Elevating HR’s Strategic Influence
One of the most significant operational transformations brought about by Workable has been Kim Gallagher’s newfound ability to quantify and communicate the tangible impact of her team’s work to executive leadership. The platform’s robust reporting features have empowered HR to move beyond anecdotal evidence and present concrete data. "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 highlighted. This ease of access to reliable data has been instrumental in elevating HR’s strategic role within the organization.
The candidate pipeline report, in particular, has become a favorite, providing a clear, comprehensive overview of total interviews conducted, messages exchanged, and pipeline movement over specific periods. Earlier this year, Gallagher pulled data that revealed over 900 messages exchanged with candidates within a certain timeframe. This figure, far from being a mere statistic, effectively communicates the sheer volume of engagement and the diligent care invested by the HR team—metrics that executive leadership can immediately appreciate and understand.
The Roughriders’ impactful internship program has especially benefited from this enhanced visibility. The program is built on a foundational mission: to address the paradox that students often struggle to gain experience without a job, and vice versa. Workable’s reporting capabilities allow Kim to meticulously document not only the number of interns hired but also, crucially, how many students received valuable interview experience with a professional sports organization. This metric captures the full scope of the program’s community impact, demonstrating its broader societal value beyond direct employment. "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," Gallagher noted, emphasizing the program’s commitment to providing developmental opportunities.
Building Trust and Enhancing Candidate Experience
The Roughriders leverage Workable for every stage of the candidate journey, from initial outreach and interview scheduling to the issuance of offer letters and beyond. This consistent use of a single platform is not incidental; it is a deliberate choice driven by Workable’s proven reliability. This inherent trust in the platform’s deliverability has profoundly shaped the team’s operational approach. When a hiring manager recently expressed a desire to meet two candidates informally for coffee, Kim Gallagher still routed the communication through Workable rather than a personal email. This decision underscores the importance of centralizing all communications, not only for internal team cohesion but also for the candidates themselves.
The consistency and reliability of Workable’s communication channels instill a crucial sense of peace of mind in applicants. "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 trust in platform communications, coupled with zero reported spam issues, significantly enhances the overall candidate experience, fostering a positive perception of the Roughriders as an organized and professional employer.
The Mobile App: Recruiting Without Boundaries
As the Saskatchewan Roughriders navigate one of their busiest hiring periods in a decade, Kim Gallagher has relied heavily on Workable’s mobile app to maintain her exceptional pace, often managing two roles simultaneously as a team of one. The mobile app has proven indispensable in providing the flexibility and continuity required for modern recruiting. "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," Gallagher stated, highlighting its critical role in enabling her to manage high-volume recruitment seamlessly.
The mobile app’s full functionality means that essential tools, such as saved email templates, are directly accessible. This allows for real-time candidate follow-ups that might otherwise be delayed until the next morning, ensuring prompt and consistent communication. For the high-volume scheduling demands of intern interviews, Workable’s self-scheduling feature, complete with built-in buffer times between calls, has become an essential tool. This functionality streamlines the logistical challenges of managing numerous interviews without compromising the quality of each individual conversation, further enhancing efficiency and candidate experience.
A Foundational Partnership for Sustained Success
The Saskatchewan Roughriders wholeheartedly recommend Workable. For professional sports organizations, which often grapple with the complexities of year-round operations alongside fluctuating seasonal and high-volume internship hiring, Workable offers a rare combination: a platform robust enough to scale with organizational growth, yet intuitive enough that anyone—from a first-time intern manager to a CEO acting as a hiring manager—can use it effectively from day one.
For Kim Gallagher, who has dedicated 15 years to building the HR infrastructure at the Roughriders and has pioneered the HR function across the entire CFL, this potent combination is far more than a mere convenience. It is the fundamental bedrock upon which all other HR initiatives and organizational successes are built. Workable has not only streamlined operations but has also empowered the Roughriders to cultivate a more efficient, transparent, and candidate-centric recruitment process, cementing its role as a strategic partner in the continued success of this iconic, community-owned franchise. The platform enables the Roughriders to efficiently attract, evaluate, and onboard top talent, ensuring the team’s operational excellence both on and off the field, and reinforcing its deep connection with its loyal fan base.
