Winnipeg Jets

How the Winnipeg Jets manage 1,300 staff at Canada Life Centre with Workforce.com

Throughout the NHL season, the Winnipeg Jets deliver an unmatched guest experience at the 15,321-capacity Canada Life Centre — managing 1,300 frontline staff across customer service, ushering, and maintenance through every game night. See how True North Sports + Entertainment uses Workforce.com to cut scheduling time by 75%, streamline shift replacements, and control labour costs across a demanding live-event operation.

Software Used

Auto Scheduling

Time & Attendance

Employee App

Shift Planning

1,300 Staff

Overview

Winnipeg lost its NHL team in 1996, a blow the city felt deeply. Hockey returned a few months later with the Manitoba Moose — an AHL team relocated from Minnesota by a local ownership group — but the mission went further than that. Fifteen years later, True North Sports + Entertainment succeeded in bringing the Jets back to Winnipeg.

"There were parties in the streets when it happened," reflects Kristin LaCroix, True North's Director of Technology Services. As a Winnipeg native, LaCroix deeply understands what hockey means to one of the NHL's smallest market cities. "Being involved in the National Hockey League gives us a big audience throughout North America. We want to represent the city in a way that everyone can feel proud of."

Today, True North owns and operates a portfolio that includes Canada Life Centre, the Burton Cummings Theatre, and the True North Youth Foundation — firmly established in the local community, with the Winnipeg Jets and the Manitoba Moose at the centre of it all.

"We want to make sure that we are ingrained in the community and are listening to what it needs … nobody wants to go through the heartbreak of losing a team again," LaCroix says.

Challenge

As the Jets' success continued to grow on and off the ice, frontline managers across customer service, ushering, and maintenance struggled to keep pace with the administrative load. Managing the labour of a 1,300-strong workforce is difficult at the best of times — doing it entirely manually made it harder.

Managers spent hours each week building schedules from scratch on spreadsheets. "There's a lot of different things our managers could be doing other than playing with Excel for hours every week," says LaCroix ruefully. But schedule building was only half the problem. Last-minute call-outs happened regularly, sending managers into a cycle of calls, texts, and emails to find replacements before shift start.

Time tracking was equally manual, run through a complex pen-and-paper process. "It was very laborious," shares LaCroix. "Managers would write down an employee's name, their start and end time … someone would then take that timesheet and type it into a database."

The method was slow and prone to error. Non-standardised rounding habits across teams pulled timesheet accuracy down, compounding mistakes and driving up wasted labour costs. As operations grew more complex, Jets management recognised that the status quo couldn't hold if they wanted to keep delivering the employee and guest experience they'd built their reputation on.

Solution

The Jets chose to move on from manual processes and partner with Workforce.com to automate workforce management across the organisation. They needed a cloud-based platform that could sync scheduling and time clocks across mobile and desktop, optimise shift creation, streamline replacements, and record time accurately without manual data entry.

The goal wasn't just operational efficiency. Easier work for managers and employees meant better experiences for fans on game day. "We want to make sure that every touch point of the guest journey is frictionless and welcoming," LaCroix says. "Making these adjustments will help us continuously improve our efficiency in delivering this kind of experience."

Outstanding Results

75% decrease

‍in time spent scheduling

80 shift swaps on average per week

119 shifts claimed on average per day

Results

Since partnering with Workforce.com, the Jets have given managers their time back, reshaped the employee experience, and delivered better game-day service for the people of Winnipeg.

"Workforce.com has unleashed our management team from their traditional manual methods — it has really given them the freedom to create a better experience for our guests," says LaCroix.

Here's where the impact has been most visible:

75% decrease in scheduling time

Managers now build schedules in a fraction of the time using 27 shift templates in Workforce.com. Once shifts are published, the platform auto-fills each one based on team and availability while avoiding overtime conflicts and checking minimum rest periods between shifts. On an average game day, the Jets fill 119 open shifts.

"Workforce.com is definitely a time-saver," says LaCroix. "It used to take most managers around two hours to make a schedule, and now it takes less than 30 minutes."

Streamlined shift replacements

The Jets now fill an average of 80 shift replacements per week through Workforce.com. When someone can't make a shift, managers send out an open-shift alert and available staff can claim it through the app — no calls, no group texts, no email chains.

"With Workforce.com, switching shifts is so much easier. I don't know anyone who's not using it," says LaCroix. "Everyone got on board with it pretty quickly."

Standardized timesheet rounding

The Jets now set their own time clock rounding rules in Workforce.com, with every clock-in and clock-out adjusted consistently across teams and locations. The result: fewer manual corrections, cleaner timesheet data, and less time spent chasing rounding discrepancies after the fact.

"Some people were rounding time in ways we didn't even know about," LaCroix reflects. "Now, Workforce.com standardizes how time is recorded — we're definitely seeing it look a little more accurate."

Increased user self-service

Through the Workforce.com employee app, Jets staff handle everything they need in one place — checking schedules, clocking in, reviewing timesheets, requesting time off, picking up open shifts, and updating personal details — without waiting on HR or management. For a 1,300-strong workforce, moving this volume of small requests off manager plates translates directly to hours of time recovered every week.

"It's taking time and effort off of the managers and handing a little bit of it to the employees," LaCroix says. "I think they really appreciate feeling more in control."

More visibility into scheduled labor costs

Managers can now break down wage costs by week, by day, and by individual shift. Every coverage request on the schedule also surfaces the potential overtime impact and wage variance up front — so decisions about who works when are made with the full cost picture visible, not discovered after the pay run.

"Workforce.com is preparing us to become a little bit more strategic in how we schedule," shares LaCroix. "It helps us move staff to different times if we see inefficiencies, helping us provide a better experience to our guests."

Conclusion

With workforce management now centralised and automated, Jets management can focus on what matters most — winning on the ice and delivering an outstanding fan experience at Canada Life Centre.

"Winnipeggers survive some pretty tough winters," LaCroix proudly states. "We really band together a lot of the time and help each other out."

That sense of community is exactly what ties the Jets to the people of Winnipeg. Backed by their fans, the team continues to showcase what a thriving Canadian hockey culture looks like — on game night and every night in between.

For Canadian stadium operators, sports franchises, and live-event venues, the Winnipeg Jets' transformation demonstrates what's possible when manual scheduling is replaced with a purpose-built platform. Workforce.com supports Canadian venues with scheduling, time and attendance, and employee apps built for the pace of event-driven work — designed for compliance with every province's labour standards.

“Workforce.com gives me a direct connection to the field – this transparency helps our retention and employee experience, ultimately creating more loyalty”