The Saskatchewan Roughriders, a venerable institution in the Canadian Football League (CFL) and the reigning 2025 Grey Cup champions, have significantly transformed their talent acquisition and people operations through the strategic implementation of Workable, a modern applicant tracking system. This pivotal shift has not only streamlined their internal processes but also solidified their reputation for operational excellence, a crucial factor for a community-owned franchise deeply intertwined with its provincial identity. The move underscores a growing trend in professional sports organizations to adopt sophisticated HR technologies, ensuring efficiency, consistency, and a superior candidate experience in a highly competitive talent landscape.
The Roughriders: A Unique Franchise with Deep Roots
Unlike most professional sports entities, the Saskatchewan Roughriders operate as a community-owned organization, a distinctive model that imbues their connection to the province with both cultural significance and structural permanence. This unique ownership structure fosters an unparalleled level of fan loyalty, evidenced by the staggering $13 million in merchandise revenue generated solely in the aftermath of their 2025 Grey Cup victory. This figure, remarkable for a province of just over one million people, speaks volumes about the profound dedication of their fan base, which extends far beyond Saskatchewan’s geographical borders. The Roughriders are not merely a sports team; they are a cherished provincial asset, a source of collective pride, and a significant economic and cultural contributor.
At the helm of the club’s people operations is Kim Gallagher, Director of Talent Management and People Operations, a pioneering figure in Canadian professional sports. With 15 years dedicated to the Roughriders, Gallagher holds the distinction of being the first dedicated HR professional in the history of the CFL. Supported by a lean two-person team, she orchestrates a comprehensive array of HR functions, from executive recruitment to the annual management of a high-volume internship program. The organization maintains approximately 80 salaried, year-round staff, a number that swells to roughly 100 additional hourly roles during the football season. This diverse workforce spans critical departments such as accounting, marketing, creative services, and digital production, with the internship program introducing a substantial layer of high-volume recruiting challenges each year.
Addressing Prior Inefficiencies: The Pre-Workable Era
Before embracing Workable, the Roughriders navigated their recruiting efforts through a system called Teamworks Online for two years, following an earlier period characterized by antiquated, inbox-based hiring practices. While Teamworks Online offered a rudimentary level of functionality, it was fraught with inefficiencies and created considerable friction across nearly every stage of the hiring process. Kim Gallagher aptly described the previous system as "really chunky," highlighting the inherent difficulties in managing the process and, more significantly, the challenges faced by hiring managers in visualizing candidate progression and understanding the overall status of their searches.
For a small HR team supporting a dynamically growing organization, these operational frictions had tangible and detrimental consequences. The act of posting job roles across multiple disparate job boards, for instance, demanded arduous manual effort for each platform individually. This repetitive task consumed invaluable time, a resource in critically short supply for a team comprising only one or two dedicated professionals. Furthermore, the absence of a clear, visual hiring pipeline meant that tracking the precise stage of each candidate was a formidable undertaking. This lack of transparency also made it difficult to ensure that hiring managers were actively engaging with the process and maintaining an appropriate pace, leading to potential delays and missed opportunities for top talent. The Roughriders recognized an urgent need for a solution specifically engineered to support their operational ethos: lean, agile, and sufficiently intuitive to be seamlessly adopted by hiring managers without the necessity of extensive training or tutorials.
The Strategic Choice: Why Workable Emerged as the Solution
The decision to transition to Workable was catalyzed by discussions at the league level, which prompted Kim Gallagher to meticulously explore the platform’s capabilities. Her comprehensive evaluation revealed that Workable offered a recruitment solution perfectly scaled to the organization’s size and specific needs, crucially without the excessive overhead typically associated with enterprise-level systems that often burden users with an abundance of unused features. Gallagher articulated this key differentiator, stating, "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."
Two fundamental features ultimately solidified the decision to partner with Workable. Foremost was the platform’s intuitive visual pipeline – the ability to clearly track candidates as they progressed through defined stages represented a monumental enhancement compared to their previous opaque experience. This visual clarity provided immediate insights and fostered a more organized, manageable recruitment flow. The second critical factor was Workable’s multi-board job posting capability. For a compact HR team, the manual effort and time investment required to individually post roles across numerous relevant job boards, including Saskatchewan-specific platforms like SAS Jobs, was substantial and unsustainable. Workable consolidated this laborious task into a single, efficient action. "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, underscoring the profound impact of this efficiency on their lean operations.
Seamless Implementation and Swift Adoption
The rollout of Workable was, in Kim Gallagher’s concise yet impactful words, "like flipping a switch." She recalled the transition as remarkably smooth, noting, "I remember it being so smooth. It just kind of flicked over." A primary concern leading up to the implementation was ensuring Workable’s seamless integration with the Roughriders’ existing website, guaranteeing that candidates would be effortlessly directed into the new hiring pipeline. This critical transition was executed without any discernible disruption. The old system was maintained for a brief period to finalize existing job postings, while all new roles were exclusively launched through Workable from day one.
What truly impressed Gallagher was the minimal onboarding required for the new system. The platform’s inherent user-friendliness meant that hiring managers could independently navigate and utilize it. "It was so user friendly that you could just figure it out. Everything was right there on the screen," she remarked, highlighting Workable’s intuitive design. This ease of use was further exemplified when even the CEO, who served as a hiring manager for a recent executive search, required no supplementary instruction. The CEO was simply added to the job, granted access to the platform, and participated fully in the recruitment process without needing any direct support or guidance from the HR team. This level of self-sufficiency among senior leadership underscores Workable’s accessibility and effectiveness across all organizational levels.
Revolutionizing Candidate Evaluation and Collaboration
With Workable firmly in place, the Roughriders achieved a significant milestone by standardizing their candidate evaluation process, a feat that had been previously unattainable. Scorecards are now universally employed across all recruitment searches, with hiring managers mandated to score every candidate at a minimum. A recent, impactful upgrade from a basic "thumbs up/thumbs down" system to a more nuanced five-star rating scale, a suggestion championed by their Workable account executive, Nick, yielded immediate and positive results. Gallagher enthusiastically described this enhancement as "life-changing," noting that "Sometimes you’re just not quite sure. Our hiring managers loved having that nuance," demonstrating the value of granular feedback.
The AI screening capability quickly emerged as another invaluable tool, particularly during periods of exceptionally high application volume, such as the surge experienced after the Grey Cup victory. This feature allowed Gallagher to efficiently prioritize candidates. "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," she explained, emphasizing its role in managing workload without compromising comprehensive review.
Customized application questions further refined the precision of their recruitment pipeline. The team strategically utilizes these questions to ascertain crucial information, such as work authorization for Canadian roles, which serves as a vital filter given the frequent misconception among applicants that a U.S. passport confers the right to work in Canada. Questions are also deployed to solicit portfolio links for creative positions or, in a more distinctive application, audition tape links from mascot candidates. While these questions are not designed to overtly screen out applicants, they effectively provide valuable insights into a candidate’s seriousness and genuine interest, distinguishing truly engaged applicants from those who are merely "mass applying."
Strategic Impact: Data-Driven Reporting and Quantifying ROI
One of the most profound operational shifts resulting from Workable’s implementation has been Kim Gallagher’s enhanced ability to quantitatively articulate the impact of her team’s efforts to executive leadership. The platform’s robust and user-friendly reporting features have been instrumental in this regard. "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, praising the efficiency and reliability of the data generation.
The candidate pipeline report has become a particular favorite, offering a transparent and comprehensive overview of total interviews conducted, messages exchanged, and overall pipeline movement over specific periods. Earlier this year, Gallagher’s analysis of this data revealed over 900 messages exchanged with candidates within a single reporting period – a compelling metric that effectively communicates the substantial volume and meticulous care invested by the HR team in candidate engagement, presenting their work in terms that executive leadership can immediately appreciate and value.
The Roughriders’ internship program, a cornerstone of their community engagement, has particularly benefited from this heightened visibility. The program is built on a foundational mission: to address the paradox that students often struggle to gain experience without a job, and cannot secure a job without prior experience. Workable’s reporting capabilities empower Kim Gallagher to document not only the number of interns successfully hired but also the broader community impact, specifically tracking how many students received invaluable interview experience with a professional sports organization. This metric vividly captures the program’s full scope of influence, extending beyond direct hires to encompass vital career development opportunities. "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, underscoring the program’s profound educational and aspirational value.
Enhanced Candidate Experience and Unwavering Communication Reliability
The Saskatchewan Roughriders conduct every stage of the candidate journey through Workable, from initial outreach and communication to interview scheduling, offer letters, and beyond. This comprehensive and consistent utilization of the platform is not merely incidental; it is a deliberate strategic choice driven by the system’s proven reliability and robust functionality.
This inherent trust in Workable’s deliverability has fundamentally reshaped the team’s operational protocols. When a hiring manager recently expressed a desire to meet two candidates for an informal coffee discussion, Kim Gallagher consciously routed the outreach through Workable rather than a personal email. This decision underscores the critical importance of maintaining all communication within a centralized system, benefiting both the internal team’s record-keeping and the candidates themselves.
Gallagher recounted a telling anecdote that encapsulates this reliability: "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." This statement powerfully illustrates how Workable has fostered a sense of security and professionalism in the communication process, enhancing the overall candidate experience and reinforcing the Roughriders’ commitment to transparent and dependable engagement.
Unleashing Mobility: The Workable Mobile App for Unbounded Recruiting
As the Roughriders navigate one of their busiest hiring periods in over a decade, Kim Gallagher has increasingly relied on Workable’s mobile app to maintain her exceptional pace, especially while managing two demanding roles simultaneously. The mobile app has proven to be an indispensable tool for ensuring recruitment continuity and flexibility.
"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 affirmed, highlighting the app’s critical role in sustaining productivity during periods of peak demand. The accessibility of saved templates directly from the mobile app means that a crucial candidate follow-up, which might otherwise be delayed until the next morning, can be dispatched in real-time, maintaining momentum and responsiveness. For high-volume intern interviews, the self-scheduling feature, strategically configured with buffer time between calls, has become an essential mechanism for managing a complex interview calendar without compromising the quality or focus of each individual conversation. This mobile flexibility ensures that the Roughriders’ HR operations remain agile and effective, regardless of physical location or time constraints.
A Resounding Endorsement: The Future of HR in Sports
Without hesitation, the Saskatchewan Roughriders emphatically recommend Workable. For professional sports organizations, which contend with the intricate demands of year-round operations alongside the high-volume nature of seasonal and internship hiring, Workable offers a rare and invaluable combination: a platform that is sufficiently powerful and scalable to accommodate significant growth, yet simultaneously intuitive and user-friendly enough that anyone – from a first-time intern manager to a CEO serving as a hiring manager – can utilize it effectively from the very first day.
For Kim Gallagher, who has dedicated 15 years to meticulously building the HR infrastructure at the Roughriders and has pioneered the establishment of a dedicated HR function across the entire CFL, this potent combination is far more than a mere "nice-to-have." It represents the foundational bedrock upon which all other organizational successes in talent management are built. The Roughriders’ journey with Workable is a testament to the transformative power of strategic HR technology, demonstrating how a well-implemented solution can drive efficiency, enhance candidate experience, provide critical data for executive decision-making, and ultimately contribute significantly to the sustained success and community impact of a beloved professional sports franchise. Their experience sets a compelling precedent for how other sports organizations can modernize and optimize their people operations in an increasingly competitive and talent-driven environment.
