The Saskatchewan Roughriders, one of the Canadian Football League’s (CFL) most esteemed franchises and the reigning 2025 Grey Cup champions, have significantly transformed their talent acquisition and people operations through a strategic partnership with Workable, a leading applicant tracking system. This collaboration has yielded substantial improvements across key performance indicators, including a marked increase in candidate volume, enhanced communication reliability, standardized evaluation processes, and unparalleled mobile flexibility, all contributing to a more nuanced, consistent, and data-driven approach to human resources. The successful integration has enabled the Roughriders’ lean HR team to manage complex hiring demands, from executive searches to high-volume seasonal and internship programs, with precision and strategic insight, thereby solidifying HR’s role as a critical business driver within the community-owned organization.
A Legacy of Loyalty: Understanding the Saskatchewan Roughriders
The Saskatchewan Roughriders are more than just a professional sports team; they are a cultural institution deeply embedded in the fabric of their province. Unlike many professional sports entities, the Roughriders operate under a unique community-owned model, a distinction that fosters an extraordinary bond with their fan base. This ownership structure means the team is not beholden to private investors but rather to the people of Saskatchewan, creating a profound sense of collective identity and pride. This unique connection translates into unparalleled loyalty, famously known as "Rider Nation," which extends far beyond the provincial borders. The financial implications of this devotion are staggering: following their 2025 Grey Cup victory, the organization generated an astounding $13 million in merchandise revenue alone, a testament to the passionate support of its one million residents and countless fans worldwide.
The operational backbone supporting this iconic franchise is managed by a dedicated team, with Kim Gallagher at the helm as Director of Talent Management and People Operations. Gallagher holds a pioneering position, being the first dedicated HR professional in the history of the CFL. With an impressive 15 years within the organization, her two-person team is responsible for the entire spectrum of people operations, from high-level executive recruitment to the meticulous management of an extensive annual internship program. The organization’s staffing needs are dynamic, comprising approximately 80 salaried, year-round employees, which expands to roughly 100 additional hourly roles during the peak football season. These positions span diverse departments, including accounting, marketing, creative services, and digital production, with the internship program adding a significant layer of high-volume recruitment challenges each year.
Overcoming Pre-Workable Hurdles: The Evolution of Roughriders’ Hiring
Before the advent of Workable, the Roughriders’ recruiting landscape was characterized by inefficiency and a lack of integrated systems. The journey began in an era of rudimentary, inbox-based hiring, where candidate communications, resumes, and evaluations were scattered across email threads and disparate documents. This fragmented approach naturally led to significant organizational friction, making it challenging to track applicants, ensure consistent communication, and maintain an equitable evaluation process.
Approximately two years prior to adopting Workable, the organization transitioned to Teamworks Online, a system that, while an improvement over pure inbox management, still presented considerable operational hurdles. Kim Gallagher vividly described the experience as "really chunky," highlighting the difficulty in managing the overall recruitment process. A major pain point was the system’s lack of intuitiveness for hiring managers, who struggled to visualize candidate pipelines and understand where applicants stood at any given moment. This absence of a clear, visual workflow led to delays and inconsistencies in candidate progression.
For a small HR team supporting a growing, high-profile organization, these inefficiencies carried tangible consequences. Manually posting job openings across multiple platforms, including niche Saskatchewan-specific job boards like SAS Jobs, consumed an inordinate amount of time and resources. This laborious process compounded quickly, especially for a team of just one or two individuals, diverting valuable time from strategic HR initiatives. Without a centralized, visual pipeline, tracking candidate progress, ensuring timely follow-ups, and holding hiring managers accountable for their review schedules became an arduous task. The Roughriders recognized an urgent need for a solution tailored to their operational ethos: lean, fast, and intuitive enough to be easily adopted by any hiring manager, irrespective of their technical proficiency.
The Strategic Choice: Why Workable Became the Solution
The decision to implement Workable emerged from league-level discussions, which prompted Kim Gallagher to explore the platform’s capabilities. What she discovered was a recruiting solution that precisely matched the Roughriders’ scale and specific requirements, offering robust features without the prohibitive overhead or unnecessary complexities often associated with larger, enterprise-grade systems. This "right-sizing" was a critical factor for the organization. "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.
Two particular features proved instrumental in sealing the decision. Firstly, Workable’s visual pipeline offered a revolutionary improvement. The ability to clearly visualize candidates moving through distinct stages of the hiring process was a significant upgrade from the opaque and disjointed experience of previous systems. This visual clarity fostered better collaboration and accountability among hiring teams. Secondly, the multi-board job posting capability was a game-changer for the time-constrained HR department. Consolidating the effort of distributing job ads across numerous relevant platforms, including local ones, into a single action dramatically reduced manual workload. "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. This efficiency not only saved time but also significantly broadened the reach of their recruitment efforts, attracting a wider and more diverse talent pool.
Seamless Transition: Implementation and Rapid Adoption
The implementation of Workable was remarkably smooth, described by Kim Gallagher as "like flipping a switch." The primary concern during the transition was ensuring seamless integration with the Roughriders’ existing website, allowing candidates to effortlessly flow into the new hiring pipeline. This transition was executed without any disruption, a testament to Workable’s robust integration capabilities and the careful planning involved. The old system remained active briefly to finalize any outstanding postings, while all new roles were launched directly through Workable from day one.
Perhaps the most striking aspect of the rollout was the minimal onboarding required. The platform’s intuitive design meant that hiring managers could navigate and utilize it independently, without extensive training or constant HR support. "It was so user friendly that you could just just figure it out. Everything was right there on the screen," Gallagher noted. This ease of use extended even to the highest levels of the organization. When the CEO served as a hiring manager for a recent search, they required no additional instruction, seamlessly participating in the recruitment process after simply being granted access to the job and the platform. This rapid, self-service adoption underscored Workable’s effectiveness in democratizing the hiring process across the organization.
Transformative Outcomes: Enhanced Evaluation and Collaboration
With Workable fully integrated, the Roughriders have achieved unprecedented standardization in their candidate evaluation processes. Scorecards are now universally employed across all searches, requiring hiring managers to provide structured feedback for every candidate. A recent upgrade from a binary "thumbs up/thumbs down" system to a more nuanced five-star rating scale, a suggestion from their Workable account executive, Nick, immediately resonated with the team. Gallagher hailed it as "life-changing," explaining, "Sometimes you’re just not quite sure. Our hiring managers loved having that nuance." This enhanced granularity in feedback has led to more consistent, objective, and fair candidate assessments.
The AI screening capability has also proven invaluable, 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 the risk of overlooking qualified candidates. "I would sort by match percentage and start with the 100% ones first — almost like a warm lead," Gallagher explained. "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 intelligent filtering mechanism significantly boosts efficiency, ensuring that precious HR time is focused on the most promising candidates.
Customized application questions further refine the screening process, adding another layer of precision. These questions are strategically designed to clarify critical information, such as work authorization for Canadian roles, a crucial filter given the frequent misconception among applicants that a U.S. passport grants automatic work rights in Canada. Additionally, specific questions are used to request portfolio links for creative roles or, in a more unique application, audition tape links for mascot candidates. Gallagher clarified the 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 helps identify genuinely interested and qualified candidates, streamlining the initial review stages.
Strategic Reporting: Elevating HR to a Seat at the Table
One of the most significant operational advancements brought about by Workable is Kim Gallagher’s newfound ability to quantify and communicate the strategic impact of her team’s work to executive leadership. Workable’s intuitive reporting features have transformed how HR demonstrates its value. "The reporting is so easy. You click and the stuff shows up," Gallagher enthused. "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." This ease of access to reliable, pre-formatted data eliminates the time-consuming process of manual report generation and minimizes the risk of errors.
The candidate pipeline report has become a particularly favored tool, providing a clear, comprehensive overview of total interviews conducted, messages exchanged, and overall pipeline movement over specific periods. Earlier this year, Gallagher utilized this report to demonstrate that over 900 messages had been exchanged with candidates, a compelling figure that effectively communicates the sheer volume of engagement and the meticulous care invested by the HR team. This data translates HR activities into tangible metrics that executive leadership can immediately understand and appreciate, underscoring the team’s operational intensity and commitment.
The Roughriders’ internship program, a cornerstone of their community engagement and talent development strategy, has especially benefited from this enhanced visibility. The program is founded on a noble mission: addressing the perennial challenge faced by students who struggle to gain experience without a job and secure a job without experience. Workable’s reporting capabilities allow Gallagher to document not just the number of interns hired, but crucially, the number of students who received invaluable interview experience with a professional sports organization. This metric captures the full scope of the program’s community impact, providing concrete data to present to executive leadership about its educational and developmental contributions beyond simple hiring numbers. "We like to do as many interviews as we can," Gallagher stated. "Even though we can only hire so many students, being interviewed by the Roughriders — that itself is something."
Building Trust and Reliability: The Candidate Experience Revolution
The Roughriders have adopted a comprehensive approach to candidate management, conducting every stage of the candidate journey — from initial outreach and interview scheduling to offer letters and beyond — exclusively through Workable. This commitment to consistency is a deliberate strategic choice, driven by the platform’s unwavering reliability. The ability to trust that communications will be delivered and tracked within a single system has fundamentally reshaped the team’s operational practices.
This inherent trust in deliverability has profound implications for both the HR team and the candidates themselves. For instance, when a hiring manager recently suggested an informal coffee meeting with two candidates, Kim Gallagher still routed the outreach through Workable, rather than personal email. This decision underscores the importance of centralizing all communications, ensuring a complete audit trail and a consistent brand experience for candidates. This singular point of contact and communication fosters peace of mind for applicants. "When I make an offer and tell a candidate it will come through Workable, you can hear the relief," Gallagher noted. "They know the message is going to arrive. It gives them peace of mind." This reliability is a critical factor in enhancing the overall candidate experience and reinforcing the Roughriders’ professional image.
Recruiting Without Boundaries: The Power of the Mobile App
As the Saskatchewan Roughriders navigate one of their busiest hiring periods in a decade, Kim Gallagher has heavily relied on Workable’s mobile app to maintain her exceptional pace, effectively managing two demanding roles simultaneously. The mobile app has become an indispensable tool, offering unparalleled flexibility and continuity. "We have more jobs open right now than I’ve seen in 10 years," Gallagher revealed. "The mobile app is allowing me to keep up. It gives me a lot of flexibility and I can work from anywhere."
The full functionality of Workable, including access to saved templates, is available directly from the mobile app. This capability means that critical candidate follow-ups, which might otherwise be delayed until the next morning, can be sent in real-time, regardless of location. For high-volume tasks such as intern interviews, the self-scheduling feature, which includes built-in buffer time between calls, has proven essential. This feature allows the HR team to manage a large number of interviews efficiently without compromising the quality or individual attention given to each conversation. The mobile app empowers Gallagher to maintain peak productivity and responsiveness, ensuring that the Roughriders’ recruiting efforts never falter, even when she is away from her desk.
A Resounding Endorsement: The Workable Advantage
Without hesitation, the Saskatchewan Roughriders unequivocally recommend Workable. For professional sports organizations, which contend with the intricate demands of year-round operations alongside the complexities of high-volume seasonal and internship hiring, Workable provides a rare and potent combination: a platform robust enough to scale with organizational growth, yet intuitive enough that any user, from a first-time intern manager to a CEO acting as a hiring manager, can effectively utilize it from day one.
For Kim Gallagher, who has dedicated 15 years to building the HR infrastructure at the Roughriders and has pioneered the professionalization of HR across the entire CFL, this blend of power and simplicity is not merely a desirable feature; it is the fundamental cornerstone upon which all other HR successes are built. Workable has not only streamlined the Roughriders’ talent acquisition processes but has also empowered the HR department to operate with unprecedented efficiency, strategic insight, and a demonstrable impact on the organization’s overall success and community engagement. The partnership exemplifies how technology, when strategically applied, can transform human resources from an administrative function into a critical strategic partner in achieving organizational objectives.
