How a Major Live Events Operator Automated Hiring and Credentialing End-to-End with AI-Native Agents
.webp)
Client Overview
A major sports and entertainment venue operator managing 50-plus arenas, stadiums, and convention centers relies on a large, distributed frontline workforce across the US, UK, and Canada. Teams include event staff, concessions workers, security personnel, and seasonal hires who rotate across properties on shifting event calendars.
With continuous high-volume hiring and multi-jurisdiction compliance requirements, the company needed an onboarding automation platform fast enough to keep pace with demand. Their existing HR technology stack, which included an applicant tracking system, a background check platform, and significant manual coordination, had grown too slow for the scale of their operations. The group partnered with Firstwork to deploy AI-native hiring agents across every stage of their onboarding and credentialing workflows.
The Challenge
The company's HR and operations teams were managing a hiring process defined by manual steps, compliance gaps, and no real-time visibility into workforce readiness.
- Coordinators manually copied start dates, manager assignments, pay group designations, and CC recipients across their ATS and HR systems for every new hire. The process could not scale with event-season demand.
- I-9 compliance was a persistent risk area. Workers could upload incorrect document types, submit blurry images, and use non-standard IDs without triggering any automated review. Each error created downstream rework and audit exposure.
- New hire emails and manager notifications were built by hand. CC lists were added individually, sends were timed manually, and there was no way to trigger communications based on workflow stage.
- Direct deposit data went to payroll without pre-submission validation, leaving the company exposed to transposed account numbers and payment failures.
- US, UK, and Canadian hiring each required different right-to-work documentation. Without automated compliance routing, each region maintained separate manual workarounds and created inconsistency across the portfolio.
- Leadership had no proactive view into credentialing risk. Compliance gaps surfaced only after errors occurred, often days before a scheduled event.
Each manual step compounded the next, resulting in slow time-to-hire, recurring compliance exposure, and a workforce activation process that could not keep pace with the business.
The Fix: Automating the process
Firstwork deployed a connected suite of AI-native agents that automated the manual work at every critical point in the onboarding and credentialing pipeline.
Key interventions:
- AI-native onboarding automation: Firstwork's workflow agent replaced manual copy-paste by automatically reading ATS data and populating start dates, manager names, pay group designations, and CC configurations into downstream HR systems in real time.
- Intelligent I-9 compliance and document verification: Firstwork's document agent enforced document type rules at the point of submission, blocked incorrect document uploads, auto-flagged blurry or unreadable images for immediate resubmission, and handled edge-case ID types with built-in logic. First-pass I-9 accuracy increased from approximately 65% to 96%.
- Automated HR communication workflows: New hire emails, manager notifications, task reminders, and onboarding follow-ups were triggered automatically based on real-time workflow status. Manual send queues were fully eliminated.
- Pre-payroll direct deposit verification: Account and routing numbers were validated by Firstwork before submission to payroll, catching transposition errors and mismatched data before they reached payroll processing.
- Multi-jurisdiction right-to-work automation: Separate compliance workflows for US, UK, and Canadian hiring automatically enforced the correct documentation requirements for each jurisdiction, replacing regional workarounds with a single, consistent, audit-ready process.
- Real-time credentialing risk and compliance dashboardHR leadership and operations teams gained a live dashboard showing credential status, outstanding document gaps, and compliance risk flags across all active hires and open roles.
The Results
Beyond the numbers, the operational shift was significant. The HR team moved from a reactive, document-chasing function to an automated workflow that surfaces exceptions rather than managing routine tasks.
Client Quote
"Our onboarding process had been duct-taped together for years. Multiple systems, a lot of manual steps, and too many moments where one mistake meant chasing it down for days. Firstwork replaced that with something that actually runs itself. I-9s come in clean, payroll data arrives pre-verified, and our team is not stuck in follow-up mode before every event. We finally have a digital hiring process that moves as fast as our business does."
- VP of Workforce Operations, Live Events and Entertainment Group
The Future
Building on measurable gains in onboarding efficiency, I-9 compliance accuracy, and time-to-hire reduction, the group is now expanding Firstwork across its global hiring operations:
- End-to-end right-to-work automation for UK and Canadian hiring pipelines, including electronic verification and regional document compliance
- Continuous credential monitoring and expiration tracking for licensed, safety-certified, and security-cleared event roles
- AI-powered recollection agents to automatically follow up on expired documents and right-to-work renewals without HR involvement
- Pre-screening automation for high-volume seasonal hiring windows, reducing time-to-offer across large applicant pools
Their long-term goal: achieve 85%+ automation coverage across the full frontline hiring lifecycle, from application intake to event-day deployment, scaling workforce capacity without scaling headcount.
