Member Blog: The 2022 Cannabis Compensation Survey is here!
by Matt Finkelstein, FutureSense LLC
Gain access to the latest information, trends, and data. DOJ compliant, unbiased, and ready for use.
The Cannabis Compensation Survey is back in action for its third year and is open for respondents thru mid-March of 2022.
Produced by FutureSense LLC & Marijuana Business Daily, the project will continue to be supported by Green Leaf Payroll & Business Services and is endorsed by the National Cannabis Industry Association. This year, the team has also added Western Management Group – a global leader with decades of experience in designing, developing, and executing compensation and benefits surveys – to assist with data management, calculations, and survey development.
Participation in the survey is vital. Individuals and organizations throughout the industry are realizing the value these results provide. Providing data benefits employees, employers, and the industry as a whole. Participation is easy and confidential – this survey follows all DOJ guidelines regarding confidentiality and anonymity to ensure unbiased results.
To comply with DOJ antitrust regulations, we welcome organization-wide submissions only and cannot accept individual submissions from sole employees. HR, payroll, and compensation department employees will have access to this data, as well Executives and Owners. Please contact us if you need help with coordinating participation from your team.
This year, the survey will also be focusing on the most critical and unique positions in the cannabis industry. While we recognize that all data is valuable, there are readily available survey sources for certain non-specified or non-industry-specific positions. We aim to produce the most robust and accurate look at the positions that matter most.
Enrollment is open through March 2022. Data submission kits will be sent out starting mid-February 2022 and due back by mid-March 2022. The final results will be published in May 2022.
For more information, to sign up to participate, and to download the 2021 Final Report, please visit https://content.futuresense.com/2022cannabiscompensationsurvey
Other highlights/news for the 2022 survey:
- Improved Data Submission Kit (DSK) – we have redesigned the DSK, making things easier to provide data and match jobs. We will also have job descriptions and leveling schema ready to assist with the job matching process.
- Focused benchmark job title list – we are honing in on the most critical and unique jobs in the industry. With other survey data readily available for non-industry-specific jobs, we hope this will make things easier and more efficient for all participants to provide their data. The final report will have clearer and more established benchmark job titles and corresponding descriptions.
- The addition of Western Management Group expands capacity to field, aggregate, and analyze data
- Brand transition – FutureSense will be dropping its cannabis-forward brand BlueFire Cannabis by FutureSense, simplifying any naming confusions
PARTICIPATE IN THE SURVEY
FutureSense® is a consulting firm specializing in the areas of organization and people. FutureSense provides holistic people strategies that improve business performance. Our specialties include business strategy, motivation and rewards, executive, employee and sales compensation, organizational and individual assessment, leadership development and coaching, human resources, communications, change, and sustainable transformation. Visit us at www.futuresense.com
Matt Finkelstein is a Consultant with FutureSense LLC and the primary project manager for the Cannabis Compensation Survey. He has a passion for both people and plants – combining years of experience in the organic farming and cannabis communities with his work in people strategies and HR consulting. He believes in the power of cannabis to heal and strengthen individuals and communities alike, and actively works to help cannabis businesses thrive. Connect with Matt on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/matt-finkelstein-972253179 or email him at matt@futuresense.com.
Member Blog: 2021 Cannabis Compensation Survey Report Released!
By Matt Finkelstein, BlueFire Cannabis by FutureSense
We are pleased to announce the release of the 2021 Cannabis Compensation Survey Report. This second annual survey aggregates compensation data for cannabis businesses and ancillary services, establishing benchmarks to help those businesses better understand the market and stay competitive, all while following federal compliance regulations that guide the collection and dissemination of compensation survey data and results.
FutureSense and NCIA laid the foundation for the project in 2019 and released results for the inaugural survey at the end of that year. At the onset of the pandemic in early 2020, both parties took a step back to adjust their trajectories looking to enhance the scope and depth of the project. Marijuana Business Daily came on as a primary partner to assist with visibility and distribution. Green Leaf Payroll & Business Solutions came on as a supporting partner, providing the project with anonymized payroll data. NCIA has stayed on as an endorsing partner to promote the shared mutual interest of supporting cannabis businesses and the industry at large.
This year, the survey established benchmarks with reportable data for 98 unique positions, a jump up from the inaugural report, which included 78 positions. The benchmarking process also established more accurate job titles representing both specific job responsibilities as well as representing the scope and breadth of organizational structures within the cannabis industry. These benchmarks include close to 200 unique positions total that will be reported on as the project grows and more cannabis organizations participate and submit data in future years.
The final report also includes recent trends and observations connecting the data to anecdotal insights found through our work and involvement in the cannabis community. The final report also provides information about how to utilize the survey data and a “geo-differential” chart to inform making any adjustments by state. The results are presented as percentiles to show both central tendency and spread. They are meant to be used as ‘guideposts’ to help inform salary and wage decisions, rather than exact numbers to base those decisions on. Many factors can and should be taken into consideration when determining what and how to pay employees, but these results provide an accurate representation of what pay amounts can be.
As the survey evolves and more companies participate, the project plans to also produce results with demographic breakouts such as by region/location, industry sector, and company size; as well as data for benefits, incentives, and equity compensation. These are all very valuable insights but require more participation across the country to produce, per compliance regulations.
The results from the survey can be used across every facet of the cannabis business. Understanding not just how to pay your employees, but also how to attract, motivate, engage, and retain your employees through compensation can be make-or-break in this rapidly evolving industry. 60-70% of companies’ expenses are typically payroll; being even 5% on- or off-the-mark could mean thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars lost or gained.
The survey’s success is contingent on participation. More and more companies are realizing the value of this information and the importance of transparency through 3rd party surveys. All submissions and their respective data are held in strict confidentiality. Abiding by the Department of Justice regulations, this survey produces anonymous and unbiased results.
The survey accepts organization-wide submissions for companies with ten or more employees at this time. Individual submissions are appreciated as anecdotal insights, but are typically not included in data calculation.
For more information and to download your copy of the survey, please visit: https://content.futuresense.com/2021cannabiscompensationreport
For any questions and/or to sign up for next years’ survey, please email matt@futuresense.com or visit: www.BlueFireCannabis.com
Matt Finkelstein is a consultant with BlueFire Cannabis by FutureSense. He has worked in the management consulting world since 2007 while also pursuing a passion for and career in organic farming. His farming experiences span across the many facets of the cannabis industry, lending itself to unique perspectives supporting his current work bringing FutureSense’s services to the cannabis industry and its community.
BlueFire Cannabis is the cannabis-forward division of FutureSense LLC, a management consulting firm providing holistic people strategies that improve business performance. Our specialties include business strategy, motivation and rewards, executive, employee and sales compensation, organizational and individual assessment, leadership development and coaching, human resources, communications, change and sustainable transformation. For more information, please visit www.BlueFireCannabis.com and www.FutureSense.com
The 2019 Cannabis Compensation Survey
NCIA is pleased to join forces with FutureSense to announce the first formally executed survey created for the cannabis and hemp industries. A growing number of companies have been looking for data and best practices for their executives and employees. This survey provides benchmark data to better understand compensation trends and remain competitive for talent in the marketplace.
2020 may be filled with unpredictable and new challenges. Compensation data and best practices are the foundation of any human resources and growth initiative. Pay is an effective supporting tool for any employee-oriented effort. As participation in the survey increases, so will our understanding of what is working and why it is effective.
We encourage you to read through the preliminary results laid out in the report and then consider taking the survey yourself by clicking on the links at the bottom of each page.
A new data release is planned for the first quarter of 2020. It will be followed by quarterly updates for the remainder of the year. We are accepting rolling submissions of the survey and will update and rerelease results on a quarterly basis. Participation is easy and we can help! If you’d like to participate simply go to www.CannaCompensation.com, select the “I Want To Participate” button, and fill in your information. FutureSense will contact you with instructions.
Member Blog: Compensation in Cannabis – Is The Data Actionable Or Just Interesting?
By Dan Walter, FutureSense LLC
Everyone wants to know how much to pay people (or how much to get paid.) In a world of instantly accessible google searches, it can be maddening that pay data for the cannabis industry is hard to find. Even when you locate information, it probably isn’t compelling (or legally compliant). What’s the problem and how do we fix it?
Here are the most basic rules:
FTC regulations require the information provided by survey participants (companies) to be based on data more than three months old. Actionable survey data can only be supplied for positions with more than five respondents. No individual participant’s data can represent more than 25 percent on a weighted basis of the reported statistic.
Any data that does not meet these minimum requirements is interesting but is unlikely to provide a solid foundation (or a legal defense). Data collected directly from employees or talent searches are almost always non-compliant.
Actionable survey data will also give you ranges for each position. At the very least, usable survey data will provide statistically relevant minimums, midpoints, and maximums for each position. More comprehensive data will usually provide quartiles or percentiles for each job. To be blunt. Median numbers are the playground of thin data. If all you see is a median, you are probably looking at data that isn’t actionable. The median may be interesting, but it isn’t much more than that.
Many providers in the cannabis industry have spent their time and money trying to help companies with better pay data. Some of the data is accurate, and some are not. Some of the data meets legal requirements, and some are just fun to have. How should a company decide which data is actionable and which is only interesting? The paragraphs above provide some insight into assessing the information out there. NCIA and FutureSense are working diligently to augment that information with a data set that respects the breadth and depth of the cannabis industry (truly an industry of industries).
This is what makes your participation in the 2019 NCIA Cannabis Compensation Study, powered by FutureSense, so important. We have executed pay surveys for decades. Our goal is to provide actionable data for every position in the cannabis industry. Your participation is crucial! Participation is simple, FutureSense does most of the work. Also, many of the industry HR, Recruiting, and Accounting service providers are already set up to submit your data quickly.
Contact us today, or contact your service provider and ask them to collaborate for you! We will update this post as new providers get on board.
