How We Built a Scalable Talent Management System in Airtable for a Growing Creative Agency

TDJ built a custom Airtable solution to help the ops team track roles, assignments, and project staffing across big brand clients. Timeline: January 15 – April 15

Client Overview

League 22 is a creative experiential marketing agency known for producing culturally-centered campaigns and activations for brands like Nike, Essence, and CultureCon. With 7–8 full-time W2 employees and 10–15 contractors, they were growing fast and needed more structure in place to manage their operations effectively.

Kenley, the Senior Operations Manager, followed The Digital Jane and reached out after her recent promotion. She was looking for support in refining their internal systems, especially talent management.

The Challenge

• Unclear division of labor between senior ops manager and coordinator

• Airtable base wasn’t functional, relying on spreadsheets and manual processes

• Inconsistent onboarding for contractors

• No process documentation

• Freelancer screening was time-consuming, with some falling through the cracks

“We were spending 2–3 hours onboarding each freelancer.” — Kenley

“What we were doing before was having all these people that emailed us, and we’d add their information here, but then we had to screen them up before a project, and it just was taking too much time. We were missing things—very integral things that could have potentially, you know, allowed us not to pick them.” — Kenley

Phase One: Groundwork

Timeline: 4–6 Weeks

Focus: Discovery, Team Clarity, and Operational Readiness

We started with workflow discovery sessions to better understand day-to-day tasks, bottlenecks, and role clarity. Each team member participated in a session where we mapped out their current workflows and identified areas of confusion or overlap. Job descriptions were realigned to reflect the actual work.

We also audited their Airtable and spreadsheets, identifying 13 core processes that needed to be developed or optimized.

Impact

• Team gained clarity on task ownership and role scope

• Shifted Audrey’s role to more confidence in ownership

• Identified duplicate work and gaps

• Created a roadmap for process documentation

“I feel pretty secure in my role as Kenley’s coordinator… I think the areas of opportunity within my role are just understanding how I can take more ownership of certain tasks and take things off of Kenley’s plate.” — Audrey

“It’s just helpful to hear her talk through the role. I’m realizing how she sees her role and what she thinks she owns.” — Kenley

Phase Two: Implementation & Documentation

Timeline: 10–12 Weeks

Focus: System Setup, Process Development, and SOPs

With a clear understanding of their workflows, we built two fully custom Airtable bases:

• Ops/Admin Matrix: A centralized hub for expense tracking and task management

• Talent Management Base: A fully automated, multi-table system for screening, onboarding, and managing freelance talent

We replaced manual steps with Airtable’s native automations and built filters, formulas, and calendar views for better visibility. Every core workflow was documented and reviewed with the team in live sessions, and accompanied by SOPs and training videos.

Impact

• Reduced hours of manual work

• Streamlined talent management process

• Easy-to-use tools integrated with team workflows

“You just condensed like four hours of Audrey’s work into like 10 minutes. Wow.” — Kenley

“I love the direction of this. I love the forms, the populations, the automation.” — Kenley

“Ashley’s gonna love this.” — Kenley

“I am extremely, extremely grateful.” — Audrey

By the Numbers:

• 14 custom boards delivered

• 7 documented processes

• 4 SOPs for core workflows

• 2 system audits and rebuilds

Phase Three: Training & Handoff

Timeline: 4 Weeks

Focus: Training, Handoff, and Support

By the final phase, we were deeply integrated with their team. We facilitated a full handoff and training session with leadership and operations, walking them through each base, workflow, and SOP.

For the first time ever, the client was confident enough to lead their own training. The operations team walked leadership through the new systems and workflows with clarity and confidence. That was huge WOW moments

Impact

• Admins now manage communication without bottlenecks

• Everything is centralized, automated, and sustainable

• Internal leaders can now own the training of new team members

“This is real good. Ya’ll taught her very well.” — Nigel

Final Transformation

Before: Talent was onboarded manually. Processes were unclear. Information lived across Google Sheets, email threads, and people’s heads.

After: The team now runs on structured workflows, clear ownership, and automated systems that scale with them.

They can confidently screen, onboard, and assign freelance support. Every process is documented, and every team member knows their role.

“Thank you so much. We really appreciate this process, and we know that it’s going to be extremely helpful for streamlining all of our incoming talent. It’s nice to have this consistent flow happening in the background, so when projects come, we have an army of folks ready to go.” — Kenley

Interested in transforming how your team works?

Learn more about Foundation First or book a discovery call.