As the owner of a business in the cannabis industry, you have to wear multiple hats. One of the hardest responsibilities to get used to is your HR role. Chances are that you — like most small cannabis companies — can’t afford to hire experienced HR professionals.

Wanting the best for your company and employees, you research the current best HR practices. While these are good intentions, it leaves holes in your knowledge. As a young and growing market, the cannabis industry poses unique challenges. If you aren’t aware of these nuances, the work environment will suffer.

By knowing where there are blind spots in HR and how they are specific to the cannabis industry, you can ensure your work environment is top notch and compliant with all regulations. Here are four topics to focus on:

Employee Handbooks

For many cannabis companies, an employee handbook is an afterthought. Business owners assume it’s more important to focus on regulations and finding great employees than creating a set of workplace guidelines. Unfortunately, without an employee handbook, other problems arise.

Take the simple act of timekeeping. It’s important for employers to set a standard of when employees show up to work, how they log their breaks, and what happens if they are late. Without these established rules, it’s easy for employees to take advantage of the time clock.

As a result, you end up paying employees for more hours than they actually work. Additionally, employees who are consistently late go unpunished and other employees have to cover for them.

There are many other problems that can be avoided, simply by having an established handbook. A great handbook gets everyone on the same page about topics like:

• Employee benefits
• Conflict resolution
• Performance expectations
• Time off guidelines
• Company mission, values, and vision
• Professional development opportunities

If this seems overwhelming, remember that Wurk can help you develop a handbook that meets your organizational needs.

Onboarding

Traditionally, the onboarding process consisted of new hires filling out employment forms and receiving minimal training. But this left many employees feeling like they’d been thrown into the deep end with life ring in sight. Without the right support, it doesn’t take long for new hires to give up and quit.

In fact, a 2018 survey found that almost 30 percent of employees left their new job within the first 90 days. For a small business in the cannabis industry, such high turnover can be devastating. All the time and energy you spent on a new hire are wasted. Not to mention, you need to once again start the costly hiring process. Avoid these issues by improving your onboarding.

One of the best strategies is automating simple tasks. For example, Wurk creates an easy-to-follow checklist that shows employees and their managers how they are progressing through tasks like completing the necessary forms and meeting with various department heads.

This gives managers more time to focus on making the new hire feel at home and valued by the team. Instead of tracking and filing forms, managers can sit down with their new hire, introduce them to co-workers, provide hands-on training, and create a solid foundation for long-term employment.

ACA Compliance

The Affordable Care Act provides healthcare services to many employees. But as an employer unfamiliar with legal or medical terms, it can be difficult to understand the law. And if you make a mistake, the consequences can be severe.

For instance, many small cannabis businesses assume if they have less than 50 employees the ACA doesn’t apply to them. In reality, it’s 50 full-time equivalent employees. This means the number of hours part-time employees work also influence what benefits you need to offer employees.

One way to avoid confusion is to look for HR technology platforms that have ACA compliance built in. For example, Wurk’s platform is a great payroll option for companies in the cannabis industry. It also ensures ACA compliance, taking two aspects of HR off your plate.

Badge Tracking

While cannabis is legalized in more than half of the United States, and 70% of Americans favor federal legalization, it isn’t. Therefore, cannabis companies are often heavily scrutinized, and regulators work tirelessly to monitor businesses and enforce penalties against those who are not compliant with state or federal laws. Cannabis industry leaders must invest in a human resource management platform that has their best interests at heart.

• Würk’s human resource management system provides the necessary tools for managing ACA, FLSA, and FMLA requirements, including comprehensive badge tracking. In fact, Würk is the only cannabis solution that offers accurate employee badge tracking necessary for managing state requirements. The cannabis employee management software can track and check the status of a budtender’s badge credentials and will let their employer know when their credentials are due to expire so they can stay on top of renewals.
• The cost of non-compliance in the cannabis industry is hefty, ranging from a few hundred dollars to millions. It is best to invest in a solution that will help a business remain upright and move towards its goals rather than an operation-killing, financial punishment.

Employee Engagement

Employers often think if they offer fair pay and treat employees well, that’s enough to keep people satisfied. However, there’s another important factor for employee happiness and retention: engagement.

Employee engagement is more than satisfaction. It’s about employees feeling a connection with their organization, team, and role. They need to feel like their job matters and contributes to the company’s success.

In the cannabis industry, the nature of many jobs poses an employee engagement problem. Hourly positions are often repetitive, leaving employees feeling bored and unfulfilled. As your company’s HR department, it’s up to you to help employees see the meaning in the role.

For example, a budtender at a medical dispensary might feel their job is just manning the register. But they are also the face of your business. They interact with customers, providing these employees with a unique opportunity to better understand your customers. Encourage these employees to talk to customers and then share common themes or ideas with leadership to help define customer relationship management. This will help them see how they are positively impacting people’s lives and making a difference in the organization.

Data Security

Technology can be a gift, but it can also be troublesome. Thus far, data breaches have cost victim organizations $4.88 billion in 2024, a 9.6% increase from the previous year. While human capital management solutions are effective, it is imperative that companies, particularly in the cannabis industry, identify human resource management.

• Both Würk’s highest quality Human Capital Management platform and compliant payroll solutions leverage independent third parties to help us strengthen data security by conducting a System and Organization Controls (SOC) Audit. that prioritize data safety.
• All of Würk’s clients can access their workforcement solutions from a web browser or mobile device via an encrypted Transport Layer Security sessions using port 443, ensuring the safety of payroll, scheduling, timekeeping and other pertinent data remains protected. 
• As the only SOC-compliant provider, Würk has displayed an unparalleled commitment to maintaining the most secure and reliable data centers in the industry, so companies feel confident that Würk will keep all of their information secure.

Scheduling & Attendance

More than 90% of US workers who track their time say they are happy to do it. Furthermore, nearly 75% say, “It is very important, and I try to be as accurate as I can.” However, 80% of employee timesheets have to be corrected, and accountants say 92% of their clients have a problem with time theft — adding 5%, on average, to their gross payroll costs. As it turns out, the disconnect can often be traced back to a company’s scheduling and attendance platform.

• More than one in three businesses admit to using an outdated scheduling and time-tracking system. Unfortunately, antiquated or improper timekeeping systems can cost employees in the US as much as $11 million. Würk combats this issue with a high-quality, tech-forward employee management solution that gives employers and employees round-the-clock access to work schedules, makes it easy to adjust schedule preferences, and profiles real-time labor data to reduce labor costs and decrease workforce compliance risk. With this solution, employers ensure that the right people are on the clock at the right time and paid appropriately.

Cannabis Deserves Quality HR Tools Too

In any other function of business, companies would seize the opportunity to explore a collection of tech solutions that perform cost-cutting measures through precise timekeeping, protect sensitive data and strengthens compliance measures. However, companies often overlook these solutions because the importance of human capital and workforce management is not emphasized enough. Fortunately, that can change as more companies embrace tech solutions that sharpen businesses measures and help the workplace run smoothly. Würk provides a market-leading suite of solutions that address the issues mentioned above and more.