As our industry continues to grow and develop, it is important that we make sure that our human resource practices are in line with that of other established industries. This includes the recruiting and hiring of employees…the most critical part of this process being the interview. Here are a few things to keep in mind when interviewing potential candidates for your cannabusiness:
1. Set the tone and boundaries of the interview from the beginning
If you set expectations from the beginning of the interview that you will only be discussing the individual’s work experience and how this qualifies them for the role, you set a tone that will hopefully avoid any disclosure of information that could put the organization at risk. What makes interviewing candidates in this industry more difficult than others is that many have a very personal relationship with the plant and launch into telling you the story about this relationship if you don’t initially set the tone. Why this could end up being difficult for employers is that the information a candidate may want to volunteer could potentially put you at risk. Hiring decisions should be based on an individual’s qualifications for the job and culture fit for the organization.
For example, if an individual begins to address a health condition as a reason for their interest in the industry, this could put you in a challenging position. If for some reason an interviewing candidate discloses a health condition during the interview process, divert the topic immediately and move on to something else. You will also want to keep this information to yourself so other interviewers are not biased to make a hiring decision based on this information. Again, hiring decisions should be based entirely on a person’s ability to do the job and their culture fit for the organization. Ask questions that allow them to shine, while still getting to the heart of the matter regarding their experience, skills, and temperament to assess whether or not they would be a good match for your organization.
The EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) is the division of the U.S. government that enforces violations of discrimination. They ensure that job applicants and employees are not being discriminated against on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, or genetic information. Be mindful of the kinds of questions you ask so you don’t expose your company to accusations of unlawful discrimination.
2. Train your interviewers
Interviewing is not something that comes naturally to everyone. In order to make sure you are interviewing potential candidates appropriately, train your interviewers! If you are less than confident that you’re observing best practices, an experienced HR or staffing professional should be able to bring you and your fellow hiring managers up to speed.
3. Be careful when requiring ‘tests’
Many of you might want to administer ‘tests’ to employees as a way to determine their qualifications. While this may seem like an easy way to weed through the good and bad candidates, you must be cautious using this approach. Make sure your tests are relevant to the job in question to help shield your company from charges of discrimination. In addition, not all companies offering testing services are created equal. Make sure you do your research and ask questions around the potential liability of using their testing services.
4. Provide a great candidate experience
Kara Bradford, Chief Talent Officer, Viridian Staffing
The cannabis industry is still a very small community. If you don’t provide a positive, professional candidate experience during the interview process, not only might you miss out on that candidate but you may miss out on other great candidates due to negative word of mouth, blogs, or social media. If you are less experienced in this area, I suggest engaging the advice of a seasoned HR or staffing professional to help in development of your organization’s candidate experience.
*Please note that while she is an HR Professional, Kara Bradford is not an attorney. Any recommendations in this article are not to be construed as legal advice. For legal advice, you should consult your attorney.
Kara Bradford, MBA, is Co-Founder and Chief Talent Officer of Viridian Staffing. She has been an HR professional, specializing in Talent Acquisition, Workforce Planning, Employer Branding, Compliance, and Organizational Design for over 14 years. Her career has spanned multiple Fortune 100 companies in a wide variety of industries. Kara has an MBA in Human Resources & Organizational Behavior and is PRC, CIR, and CSSR Certified. She also sits on the Board of a Global Recruiting organization. Kara has spoken and is slated to speak at several National conferences this year in both the Cannabis and HR industries.
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Earlier this year, Bethenny Frankel, former reality TV star, author, and founder of Skinnygirl, a low-calorie alcoholic beverage line, announced she was launching her next product, Skinnygirl Marijuana. According to Frankel, her company will engineer a strain that does not induce the munchies.
Bethenny Frankel, creator of the Skinnygirl empire.
Ms. Frankel has created a Skinnygirl empire that includes a blender, recipe books, adult-beverages, and a novel. She also wrote a children’s book based on her dog. Her first book aimed to empower women to live life to their fullest potential at all times. The Skinnygirl line now offers women low-calorie options for food and beverages as a means to find your best self. Bethenny, a true entrepreneur, now wants a piece of the cannabis gold rush.
As the cannabis industry matures, we will see other mainstream individuals and companies enter the market. The weight-loss industry has annual revenue of around $60 billion. Compare this to the legal cannabis industry with annual revenue of about $2.7 billion. Big Pharma, alcohol, and tobacco are not the only ones paying attention to the emerging green rush.
Edible product companies are beginning to produce vegan, gluten-free, and sugar-free options. But most edible products contain heavy doses of sugar, dairy, and gluten… hardly a dieters’ dream come true. Enter Bethenny Frankel. Her announcement will influence other weight-loss companies to enter the cannabis market. Will there be a “Dixie Elixir Zero” or “fat-free Sour Bhotz”?
Personally, I struggle with the idea of my dispensary, Pure Green, offering dieting products. I am an average sized woman with curves. Like every other woman in the United States, I struggled with my body image. During high school, I was a member of the cheerleading squad. I was the biggest member of the squad and was reminded of my size difference regularly. When we ordered new basketball uniforms, most of the squad ordered tops sized 28-34. Not mine. We ordered a size 40 that had to be altered in the armpits because I couldn’t get the smaller sizes over my chest.
Meghan Walstatter, owner of Pure Green dispensary in Portland, OR.
Now I can look back at these moments with a smile, but it took years to get to this place with cannabis’s help. Cannabis can help reduce anxiety, depression and stress — which can all be direct effects of body image issues. If more women relaxed with cannabis, they could have a more laid-back approach to life, resulting in an improved relationship with their bodies. I would love to help other women find body acceptance with the aid of cannabis. I absolutely do not want to participate in the exploitation of other women’s self-esteem.
Women in their 50’s and 60’s are among the fastest growing customer demographic in both the medical and adult-use markets. As retailers, we need to determine whether cannabis weight-loss products will attract these customers and other women. Women are responsible for making decisions about most household purchases. If we want our products on their radar screens, we need to offer the items they want to purchase. This may mean offering low-calorie and low-fat edibles.
Retailers can also engage in a dialogue with their existing customers about their interest in these types of products. Just because Bethenny Frankel wants to expand her product line doesn’t mean the strain of cannabis she wants to cultivate will be successful on the ground.
More mainstream industries want a piece of the cannabis pot of gold. We will see more people announcing their products lines, some with professionalism and others with ignorance. Established retailers, cultivators, and processors will have to be monitoring the response to these products to determine whether to include them in their business models. Market trends often prevail over personal values. Only time will tell.
Meghan Walstatter and her husband Matt own Pure Green, a medical dispensary located in Portland, Oregon. She is a founding member of both the Oregon Cannabis PAC and the Oregon Grower’s Association. Meghan was a member of the finance committee for Measure 91, the ballot measure that legalized cannabis in Oregon. She also has a Masters of Urban and Regional Planning from Portland State University.
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I am very excited and honored to the be a keynote speaker at NCIA’s Cultivation Management Symposium in Seattle, March 16-18. I will be presenting on March 17th, focusing on Operations Management: Production, Processing, and Distribution.
In this video, you will see a brief introduction to our Denver facility, where Rolling Stone said “…if your nose is Snoop Dog-calibrated to sniff out only majority primo herb, you might just end up…“
We are proud of the work we have done in growing the finest quality small-batch medical and recreational cannabis on a large scale with consistency through beyond organic practices. There is a lot to cover and I look forward to presenting what we do and how we have done it. I will start out with the key to any strong operation, genetics, and take you right through our cultivation, harvesting, processing of the highest quality waxes, shatters, hash, live wax, live resin, and on through distribution.
If you have any specific areas on which you would like for me to speak or questions you would like to see answered, please comment here and I will do my best to make sure they are answered at the event. If you would like a private meeting or consultation at the event, please contact erik.williams@bemindful.today.
Phillip Hague, Mindful’s Master Cultivator, is widely recognized as the industry’s highly responsible leader of specialized growing practices. Having grown up working in his family’s twelve-acre greenhouse complex, he possesses a lifetime of horticultural knowledge encompassing large-scale commercial greenhouse production, large commercial landscape projects, and extensive knowledge of commercial farming practices. He understands the intricacies of industrial gardening and mindfully uses that experience to grow the highest quality cannabis with an eye toward honoring, protecting and improving genetics. Winner of numerous awards, including the prestigious Cannabis Cup, Phillip has been featured in a number of articles on the cannabis industry including High Times centerfold feature “The Indoor Acre”, in Rolling Stone Magazine, 60 Minutes, The New York Times, Yahoo News, The Wall Street Journal, in foreign press representing some 45 countries and will soon be featured in National Geographic. Prior to Mindful, Mr. Hague was the Master Grower for Golden Goat/VIP Cannabis and Natural Remedies, where he was responsible for warehouse grows and light grow facilities.
NCIA’s Cultivation Management Symposium is just around the corner!
Join us in Seattle from March 16-18 to learn from experts and pioneers in the field what you need to know to operate a successful cultivation operation while staying on top of emerging trends in the evolving cannabis industry. Register today!NCIA members save $150 on admission.
This three-day conference held at the Bell Harbor International Conference Center will showcase presentations from leaders in the cannabis cultivation arena with industry leaders specializing in sustainable cultivation methods and green business practices to learn how to keep your cannabusiness ahead of the curve while providing a positive example for others to follow.
Guest Post: Work and Well-Being in the Cannabis Industry
Across countries, continents, and cultures, we humans all have certain things in common. Generally speaking, one of those commonalities is work, which we all spend a huge portion of our lives doing. Since we all devote so much time to work, I often ask myself: “how can we make all this time spent working into the best experience it can be?” As such, my research is devoted to understanding and creating positive work environments that foster a sense of well-being, such as this latest project among workers in the cannabis industry of Colorado.
This isn’t always an easy task to accomplish. A quick Google search on “job stress” or “job safety” will instantly provide thousands of pages showing daunting statistics about how stressed out today’s worker is (like this report by NIOSH) or how dangerous some jobs are based on injuries, illnesses, and fatalities (which the Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks). The general takeaway from all these numbers is that 1) job stress is very real, and continues to increase in society; and 2) while we are continually developing better ways to make safe and healthy workplaces, there is still much more work to be done.
With these discussions in mind, you might be asking yourself: how does all this relate to workers in the cannabis industry? The short answer is “we don’t know yet”. The longer answer is “we don’t know how this relates to workers in the cannabis industry, because no one has ever asked these workers until now.” And that’s where we (my research team and I) come in, to ask these questions and provide the longest (and most thorough) answer we can.
When I first became involved with the cannabis industry, I was on a team to conduct a general health, safety, and well-being assessment for a dispensary in the Denver area. After speaking with the management and workers there, our team quickly realized that best practices for health, safety, and wellness on the job had not been addressed for this industry on a large scale. While we were able to provide our services and fill this void for that particular dispensary, it was only one piece of the puzzle – we need more pieces in order to really know how we can help this whole industry, which is constantly growing and is economically valuable to Colorado.
Additionally, there is more to satisfaction at work than simply being physically safe and healthy. Emotions, relationships, interpersonal communication, thoughts, and feelings all matter, and all play a role in determining how satisfied and happy we are with the work that we do. With that in mind, my research team and I are here to play our part in ensuring a healthy, safe, and happy future for workers in the cannabis industry.
Our team of researchers comes from Colorado State University and the University of Colorado-Denver. We are experts in a variety of fields and topics, including psychology, stress, occupational health, public health, health promotion, training, vocation, and quality of life. In this project, we are combining our skills to conduct a survey about work-related health, stress, and well-being among workers in the cannabis industry of Colorado. We are trying to understand a number of things, including why people choose to work in the industry, what sorts of jobs these workers perform, and how they feel about their job and work environment. We will then give this information back and provide results and recommendations for the industry, free of charge and with no catch.
We need help from workers in the cannabis industry of Colorado to complete an anonymous and confidential 30-45 minute online survey about your work environment and experiences. Ideally, entire organizations will participate (including management and workers) because this will allow us to paint a better picture of what is happening across the entire industry. In return, each person who completes the 30-45 minute survey will receive $20 in cash or a gift card as a “thank you” for your help! As mentioned above, we will also provide survey results and recommendations to the industry when the project is completed.
Interested in helping? If so, please complete this very brief survey to answer a few questions. After you complete this brief survey, a member of our research team will contact you to follow up and arrange to take the 30-45 minute survey. We are ready and available to come to your worksite with tablets for you to complete the survey on. If in-person tablet surveys are difficult to schedule, we can also email you a survey link or conduct pen-and-paper surveys the old-fashioned way.
Thank you for playing your role in ensuring a safe and healthy future for this industry! If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me at the email address below.
NOTE: While we recognize the importance of health, safety, and well-being on a global scale (i.e., among industries and workers in other states and countries), we are focused only on Colorado in this study in order to have confidence in how we interpret the data. If we included other states and industries, there would be too much “noise” in the data to really know what we were seeing, given that this study is the first of its kind. Ideally, we will be able to conduct future projects that can examine and answer these questions in other industries as well.
Kevin M. Walters, graduate student at Colorado State University in Industrial/Organizational Psychology
The growth of the medical marijuana movement presents a unique opportunity for advocacy groups to work hand-in-hand with the business community in order to bring about positive social change. Historically, advocates for important social reforms like the 40-hour week and safer working conditions had an understandably anti-business orientation. But when we’re talking about providing greater access to medical marijuana, such an attitude is less than helpful. In fact, it’s counter-productive. I believe if that fact were merely recognized and accepted by both medical marijuana activists and the business community, we would be much closer to establishing national acceptance than we are today.
Changing state law to allow access to medical marijuana always starts with advocacy. Most likely groups like NORML will have been agitating for years, and individual patients’ rights groups will have formed around specific issues like access for children with epilepsy or veterans with PTSD. Eventually the Marijuana Policy Project, the largest organization working solely on marijuana policy reform, will start backing the local movements by injecting capital and other resources as part of an organized push for either a statewide initiative or legislative action. Although that is an oversimplification, it paints a picture of the landscape.
Usually, once a state law has been enacted to allow for access, the advocates quiet down and business rules the day. Licensees, who are above all businesspeople thrilled at this newfound opportunity, plow full steam ahead. They raise money, build infrastructure, create jobs, and serve the community.
Although they have common interests, the link between businesspeople and advocacy groups is never formally cemented and no long-term commitments are ever made. It seems like every other big (or growing) industry understands the need for advocacy at the local and federal level. This is true across the board, not only for industries like ours which reside in a controversial space. This is reflected in the effectiveness of groups like the National Restaurant Association or the American Medical Association.
Our industry has failed to create an effective symbiosis and I lay the blame on both groups. I will start with the business element; since I am part of that contingency, I am more comfortable calling out my closest colleagues. Far too many of us fail to acknowledge that, although it may be legal to run a cannabis business in your state today, it wasn’t yesterday and it may not be tomorrow. State rules can change, and even in instances where access expands, that doesn’t mean those in the business will have a seat at the table. California is the greatest example of this. Those currently operating dispensaries in California are doing so without state licensure (as none exists). The fact that millions of dollars from the current industry participants are not pouring into advocacy and lobbying efforts to ensure California eventually does standardize licensing, and when they do, to maintain a window of opportunity for those previously operating, is mind-boggling.
All you have to do is look at the online gaming fiasco to see what could happen. Online poker sites were previously licensed offshore but doing business in the United States. When the U.S. finally accepted the reality of online gambling and allowed licensing, one of the first regulations was to ban participation by companies who had previously operated without a license. The result was the domestic closure of all the major online poker sites and a huge advertisement at the Las Vegas airport promoting real money online poker now available at WSOP.com (owned by Harrah’s). Why did this happen? Because the “big business” folks understood the link between advocacy/lobbying and business, and at the end of the day the Las Vegas casino corporations were the primary supporters of the new landscape, and of course they helped influence it being set up in their favor.
In addition to the possibility of being shut out of their current marketplaces, the cannabis business community must understand that success in their state is partially reliant on the growth of the overall marketplace and success in other states. The best thing for a licensee in Illinois is to have Missouri legalize medical cannabis. The ideal situation would be for the operators in Illinois to somehow leverage their experience in that state to access licenses in their neighboring state. The only way this has a chance of happening is for the advocacy side to be successful. For that to occur, they need money and a commitment of resources.
2013 Lobby Days, National Cannabis Industry Association, with Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR)
To be fair, the advocacy groups have not done any better in forging lasting alliances. In fact, my biggest gripe with this community is their widespread distancing of their agenda from capitalism. Most, if not all, of the prominent drivers of social change on this issue have some part of their platform addressing the fact that this is about patients first. A downward spiral then ensues where, because it’s patients first, it must mean business second… or third or last or somehow altogether evil. Without successful businesses, patients will have nowhere to access the medicine that they fought so hard to get. Without successful businesses, there is no money to be poured into advocacy to open access in new states and hopefully once and for all, federally, which is the core mission of groups like the National Cannabis Industry Association (NCIA). There is absolutely no arguing this point. If that is the case, why is business so evil? It would be like a group that is fighting for family rights having part of their platform be anti-sex. Without sex you make no babies, and without successful business, patients have no cannabis.
Advocates and cannabis business owners have considerable common ground, but until they are willing to combine their efforts and wage a unified campaign, it’s going to continue to be a much harder fight than it should be.
MedMen is a medical marijuana licensing and management company with years of experience helping clients enter the field of medical marijuana, and has been a member of NCIA since August 2013.
Without a strong political machine driving legal reforms across the country, there would be no cannabis industry.
If you are a member of NCIA and would like to participate in our Annual Member Lobby Days, please visit our event page with details about the NCIA Policy Symposium and Member Lobby Days in Washington, D.C. from April 28-30, 2015.
A one-day conference focused on the latest efforts to reform state and federal marijuana laws will be held alongside NCIA’s Lobby Days, and will feature panel discussions as well as an interactive workshop teaching you how to lobby for cannabis reform. Please join us and pre-register today!
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If you set expectations from the beginning of the interview that you will only be discussing the individual’s work experience and how this qualifies them for the role, you set a tone that will hopefully avoid any disclosure of information that could put the organization at risk. What makes interviewing candidates in this industry more difficult than others is that many have a very personal relationship with the plant and launch into telling you the story about this relationship if you don’t initially set the tone. Why this could end up being difficult for employers is that the information a candidate may want to volunteer could potentially put you at risk. Hiring decisions should be based on an individual’s qualifications for the job and culture fit for the organization.
We need help from workers in the cannabis industry of Colorado to complete an anonymous and confidential 30-45 minute online survey about your work environment and experiences. Ideally, entire organizations will participate (including management and workers) because this will allow us to paint a better picture of what is happening across the entire industry. In return, each person who completes the 30-45 minute survey will receive $20 in cash or a gift card as a “thank you” for your help! As mentioned above, we will also provide survey results and recommendations to the industry when the project is completed.
