Compliance is already a tricky lane of human resources. It becomes even more delicate when HR managers are tasked with navigating compliance in an “extra legal” market. Chief people officers at cannabis companies operate under a patchwork of state decriminalization and legalization laws, without the sturdy thread of federal support.

Paths forward for financial operations, payroll and general human capital management remain murky.

“The Workdays of the world won’t do business with us because we’re not federally regulated,” Curaleaf CPO Tyneeha Rivers told HR Dive. Her company is a multistate operator (MSO) in the cannabis industry, well-known for its wide swath of medicinal and recreational weed dispensaries: a handful in Maine, Maryland and Massachusetts, with a heavy presence in Illinois, more than a dozen locations in Arizona and at least four dozen in Florida.