Work and Well-Being in the Colorado Cannabis Industry: Project Results

By Kevin M. Walters, MS and Gwenith G. Fisher, PhD, Colorado State University

Who works in the Colorado cannabis industry? What are health and safety issues that these workers face? How can we optimize well-being among cannabis workers in Colorado? These are some of the questions that our research team had as we conducted our project, which we call “Work and Well-Being in the Colorado Cannabis Industry.” We first wrote about our project back in this blog post, when we put out a call for participants in our study. (Some readers may have even taken our survey!) In that blog post, we also mentioned that we’d share a report with the industry once the project was completed – which we’re excited to do now in this post!

In a nutshell, the aim of our project was to get a pulse on health and safety in the Colorado cannabis industry on the ground floor, as it continues to grow in Colorado and in other states. During our early work in the Colorado industry in 2013, we saw a strongly supportive industry with happy workers, but also saw a need for clearer health and safety standards and practices. This led us to develop and conduct this project, in which we surveyed 214 direct-to-plant workers in the Colorado cannabis industry. Our project team is excited to share our “Quick Hits” report with the industry, which provides an overview of our project results and our recommendations to improve health and safety. Thanks to the Center for Health, Work, and Environment at the Colorado School of Public Health, the full report can be found at this link.

The “Quick Hits” report provides lots of detail on our project, statistics, and recommendations – far more than we could mention in one blog post. As such, we encourage you to download the report and share it with your friends, colleagues, and businesses. To provide a brief summary of what we found, here are some of our key findings and recommendations from the report.

First, in the report we provide a demographic overview of the industry in Colorado, such as the workers in the industry, their access to health care, and the organizations they work for. In addition to that, we describe a number of our findings on health and safety in the industry. Generally speaking, workers in Colorado’s industry felt like the work environment was fairly safe, and that their businesses strongly valued safety. That said, we also found that the quality and quantity of health and safety training varies greatly from business to business.

For example, just under half of our participants (46%) received no health and safety training or received sparse training when they were hired (like a brief discussion, or a piece of paper). Therefore, when workers don’t view cannabis industry work as hazardous, it might be due to inconsistent health and safety training. To speak more on that, we did identify some hazards associated with cannabis work, such as ergonomic issues when trimming plants throughout the day or working in tight grow spaces. Another hazard we identified was pesticide use, as some workers reported symptoms such as skin and eye irritation, headaches, and dizziness after handling pesticides (among some other symptoms as well). In the report, we provide more detailed discussion on these issues, as well as some data on worker injuries.

On the plus side, the Colorado cannabis industry is tightly knit – workers felt lots of social support from one another and from their businesses. Based on our experiences in the industry, this came as no surprise! Industry workers were also very satisfied with their jobs and their lives, and felt like their jobs were meaningful. This may relate to the fact that most workers in the industry have a strong connection to cannabis – nearly two-thirds were medical card holders, and nearly all workers we surveyed used cannabis in some capacity.

A key strength of our report is the recommendations we provide that address both the physical and psychological aspects of cannabis industry work. Given the various types of health and safety training that workers received, we provide a list of recommended training topics for businesses. In addition, we provide research-based tips on what to do before, during, and after training programs to make sure that what workers learn in training is properly transferred to the job. After all, what good is training if it doesn’t stick?!

In addition to training recommendations, we also provide info on other resources (like this CDPHE Guide to Worker Health and Safety in the Marijuana Industry) and other general recommendations. For example, we encourage businesses to implement health promotion programs at work, offer various supports to employees, and strive for diversity and sustainability in the industry.

These are only some of the key topics in our report – we hope you download the report, share it with others, and enjoy the content! We would like to thank our project team, NCIA, Kayvan Khalatbari, and our other industry partners and research colleagues for all your help throughout the project.

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Kevin M. Walters, MS, is a doctoral student at Colorado State University in Industrial-Organizational Psychology (the scientific study of the workplace) and a trainee in Occupational Health Psychology (applying psychology to improve the quality of work life, and to protecting and promoting the safety, health and well-being of workers) through the Mountains and Plains Education and Research Center (MAP ERC). His research focuses on worker well-being and positive aspects of work, such as job satisfaction and meaning of work, with a special focus on workers in the cannabis industry. You can contact with any questions or comments at kevin.m.walters@colostate.edu.

Gwenith G. Fisher, PhD, is an Assistant Professor and Program Coordinator of Industrial-Organizational Psychology at Colorado State University. She is also the Director of the MAP ERC Occupational Health Psychology Training Program. Her research focuses on work-life balance, as well as health and well-being of workers, with a special focus on older populations and those nearing retirement.

Guest Post: Work and Well-Being in the Cannabis Industry

By Kevin M. Walters, Colorado State University

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.

SurveyIcon 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*

Kevin M. Walters is a graduate student at Colorado State University in Industrial/Organizational Psychology (the scientific study of the workplace) and a trainee in Occupational Health Psychology (applying psychology to improve the quality of work life, and to protect and promote the safety, health and well-being of workers). He works closely with his advisor, Dr. Gwenith G. Fisher, and his research focuses on positive aspects of the work environment, such as job satisfaction and meaningfulness of work. You can contact him with any questions, comments, or concerns via email at kevin.m.walters@colostate.edu.