Tag Archives: turnover

Best Practices for Training New Hires and Documenting Operations

By Dede Perkins
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Let’s just say it. There is an undeniable chaos in the cannabis industry. It doesn’t matter if you’re a big or small operator, it’s likely that you don’t have a documented system for creating and managing ever-changing SOPs or for consistently training all employees on the most current versions of those SOPs. This chaos is often the result of rapid growth, mergers and acquisitions, and the ever-present turnover in our industry. When department leadership changes, and it often does, established policies and procedures are often left behind. In some cases, this is a positive sign of growth. As a company outgrows SOPs and as it develops more sophisticated ways to cultivate, extract, process, manufacture, package and sell cannabis and cannabis products, inevitably, the old ways of doing business need to be replaced. For those operators who have prioritized operational excellence, whether they want to position their company for new investment, merger or acquisition, or just want to create a consistent and standardized, branded product, it’s critical to get control of SOPs, training and documentation.

Food processing and sanitation
By standardizing and documenting safety procedures, manufacturers mitigate the risk of cannabis-specific concerns

As with most big goals, to obtain operational excellence, you need to break the goal into manageable steps. Assuming you have accessible quality policies and procedures in place, properly training employees when they first start work and on an ongoing basis as policies and procedures change is the number one key to successful operations. When employees know how to do their job and understand what is expected of them, they are positioned for success. When employees are successful, it follows that the company will also be successful. Documenting operations is a second important step in obtaining operational excellence. While training and documentation appear to be different, in best-practice organizations, they are inextricably linked.

One Set of SOPs

Those of us who have been in the cannabis industry for a while have experienced firsthand or heard stories of facility staff working off of two sets of SOPs. There’s the set of SOPs that are printed or digitally available for the regulators, let’s call them the “ideal” set, and then there are the SOPs that actually get implemented on a day-to-day basis. While this is common, it’s risky and undermines the foundation of operational excellence. Employees often know there are two sets of SOPs. Whether they express it or not, many are uncomfortable with the intentional or unintentional deception. When regulators arrive, will they have to bend the truth or even lie about daily operations? Taking the time to establish and implement one set of approved SOPs that is compliant with both external regulations and internal standards is good for employee morale, productivity and ultimately, profits.

What’s the best way to get control of a facility’s SOPs? Again, break it into manageable steps:

  • First, task someone with reviewing all SOPs that are floating around. Determine if any are non-compliant, which ones need to be tossed and which ones need to be revised so they work for the company as well as outside regulatory authorities.
  • At a minimum, establish a two-person team to draft, review, publish and distribute the final SOPs. Ensure that at least one member of the team has management level authority. Assign that employee the responsibility of reviewing the SOPs before “publication” and distribution.
  • Archive, delete, or actually throw away outdated or non-compliant SOPs
  • Revise or create new best-practice SOPs that are in compliance with external regulations and internal standards
  • Establish a system to update SOPs when external regulations and internal standards change
  • Use a naming convention that distinguishes draft SOPs from final SOPs, for example, “Post-Harvest Procedure, FINAL”
  • Inform employees that they will be retrained on the new SOPs and that approved SOPs will always have the word “Final” in the title
  • Store the final SOPs in an easily accessible location and give employees access, not only during training, but on an ongoing basis

Centralized Repository for Final SOPs

Storing final, approved SOPs in one easily accessible, centralized location and giving employees access sounds simple, but again, this is the cannabis industry, so this often doesn’t happen. Many of us have or are currently working for an organization that stores SOPs in multiple places. Each department may have its own way of updating, disseminating and storing SOPs. Some SOPs are stored in a printed binder stuffed in a drawer or left on a bottom shelf. Others are stored digitally. Some use both systems, which creates confusion. Who knows if the digital versions or the printed versions are the most current? Surely someone knows, but often the front-line staff do not.“Once you’ve established a single set of compliant SOPs and have stored them in one accessible location, it’s time to train your employees.”

Establishing a centralized repository for final, approved SOPs is the foundation of operational excellence. It lets employees know that operations are organized and controlled, and it reassures regulatory authorities and external stakeholders—think insurers, bankers, investors—that the company prioritizes compliance and organization. And external stakeholders who believe that an organization is proactive and well-run tend to be more forgiving when the inevitable missteps occur. Companies that are organized, have effective training systems, regularly conduct internal audits to identify potential issues and take identifiable action steps when necessary to remediate issues, receive fewer deficiency notices, violations and fines than their less organized competitors.

Train Employees

Many states require cannabis operators to provide a specific number of training hours prior to an employee beginning work, and a specific number of continuing and refresher training hours annually. Once you’ve established a single set of compliant SOPs and have stored them in one accessible location, it’s time to train your employees. To do so, set clear expectations and decide who is responsible for what. Is the HR manager responsible for initial onboarding and training? Are department managers responsible for ongoing and annual training? Create a training responsibility chart that works best for your company; write it down and share with all stakeholders.

Documenting all key areas of operation on a recurring basis will help you keep track of a large facility and workforce

The next step is to figure out how to train your employees. Individuals have different learning styles, so ideally, you’ll offer multiple ways for them to master the requirements of their position. Assign written materials and if possible, attach short videos showing the best way to complete a task. Follow up with a quiz to determine comprehension and a conversation with a department lead or manager to answer questions and review the key take-aways. Ideally, the department manager or lead employee will work with the employee until they are competent and comfortable taking on new assigned tasks and responsibilities.

Sum It Up 

Operational excellence begins with:

  • Knowledge of and access to current external rules and regulations and internal standards
  • One set of approved and easily accessible policies and SOPs that comply with both external and internal standards
  • An initial training system with clearly assigned roles, responsibilities, and goals
  • An ongoing training system with clearly assigned roles, responsibilities, and goals
  • Systems to:
    • Test knowledge before employees begin unsupervised work
    • Stay up-to-date with all changes to external rules and regulations and internal standards
    • Control policy and SOP revision process
    • Inform all stakeholders when policies and SOPs change
    • Test that employees understand new standards
    • Document all key areas of operation on a recurring basis
    • Address deficiencies and evaluate whether SOP revisions are warranted
    • Document and implement necessary remediation when necessary

For those of you rolling your eyes and thinking you don’t have time for this, ask yourself, “Can you afford not to?”

For those of you committed to operational excellence and doing what it takes to get there, congratulations on being a visionary leader. Your efforts will pay dividends for your own company and will help the cannabis industry grow into a well-respected, profitable industry that improves lives.

Facility Considerations for Cultivation & Manufacturing: A Case Study

By David Vaillencourt
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The cannabis industry is growing and evolving at an unprecedented pace and regulators, consumers and businesses continually struggle to keep up.

Cannabis businesses: How do you maintain an edge on the market, avoid costly mistakes?

Case Study: Costly Facility Build Out Oversights

David Vaillencourt will be joining a panel discussion, Integrated Lifecycle of Designing a Cultivation Operation, on December 22 during the Cannabis Quality Virtual Conference. Click here to register. A vertically integrated multi-state operator wants to produce edibles. The state requires adherence to food safety practices (side note – even if the state did not, adherence to food safety practices should be considered as a major facility and operational requirement). They are already successfully producing flower, tinctures and other oil derivatives. Their architect and MEP firm works with them to design a commercial kitchen for the production of safe edibles. The layout is confirmed, the equipment is specified – everything from storage racks, an oven and exhaust hoods, to food-grade tables. The concrete is poured and walls are constructed. The local health authority comes in to inspect the construction progress, who happens to have a background in industrial food-grade facilities (think General Mills). They remind the company that they must have three-compartment sinks with hot running water for effective cleaning and sanitation, known as clean-out-of-place (COP). The result? Partial demolition of the floor to run pipeline, and a retrofit to make room for the larger sinks, including redoing electrical work and a contentious team debate about the size of the existing equipment that was designed to fit ‘just right.’

Unfortunately, this is just one more common story our team recently witnessed. In this article, I outline a few recommendations and a process (Quality by Design) that could have reduced this and many other issues. For some, following the process may just be the difference between being profitable or going out of business in 2021.

The benefits of Quality by Design are tangible and measurable:

  1. Reduce mistakes that lead to costly re-work
  2. Mitigate inefficient operational flow
  3. Reduce the risk of cross-contamination and product mix-ups. It happens all the time without carefully laid out processes.
  4. Eliminate bottlenecks in your production process
  5. Mitigate the risk of a major recall.

The solution is in the process

Regardless of whether you fall in the category of a food producer, manufacturer of infused products (MIP), food producers, re-packager or even a cultivator, consider the following and ask these questions as a team.

People

Food processing and sanitation
By standardizing and documenting safety procedures, manufacturers mitigate the risk of cannabis-specific concerns

For every process, who is performing it? This may be a single individual or the role of specific people as defined in a job description.

Does the individual(s) performing the process have sufficient education and training? Do you have a diverse team that can provide different perspectives? World class operations are not developed in a vacuum, but rather with a team. Encourage healthy discourse and dialogue.

Process

Is the process defined? Perhaps in a standard operating procedure (SOP) or work instruction (WI). This is not the general guidance an equipment vendor provided you with, this is your process.

How well do you know your process? Does your SOP or WI specify (with numbers) how long to run the piece of equipment, the specification of the raw materials used (or not used) during the process, and what defines a successful output?

Do you have a system in place for when things deviate from the process? Processes are not foolproof. Do not get hung up on deviations from the process, but don’t turn a blind eye to them. Record and monitor them. In time, they will show you clear opportunities for improvement, preventing major catastrophes.

Materials

What are the raw materials being used? Where are they coming from (who is your supplier and how did you qualify them)?

Start with the raw materials that create your product or touch your product at all stages of the process. We have seen many cases where cannabis oils fail for heavy metals, specifically lead. Extractors are quick to blame the cultivator and their nutrients, as cannabis is a very effective phytoremediator (it uptakes heavy metals and toxins from soil substrate). The more likely culprit – your glassware! Storing cannabis oil, both work in process or final product in glass jars, while preferred over plastic, requires due diligence on the provider of your glassware. If they change the factory in which it is produced, will you be notified? Stipulate this in your contract. Don’t find yourself in the next cannabis lead recall that gets the attention of the FDA.

Savings is gained through simple control of your raw materials. Variability in your raw material going into the extractor is inevitable, but the more you can do to standardize the quality of your inputs, the less work re-formulating needs to be done downstream. Eliminate the constant need to troubleshoot why yields are lower than expected, or worst case, having to rerun or throw an entire batch out because it was “hot” (either too much THC in the hemp/CBD space or pesticides/heavy metals). These all add up to significant downstream bottlenecks – underutilized equipment, inefficient staff (increase in labor cost) all because of a lack of upstream controls. Use your current process as a starting point, but implement a quality system to drive improvement in operational efficiency and watch your top line grow while your bottom-line decreases.

Consistency in quality standards requires meticulous SOPs

Have you tested and confirmed the quality of your raw material? This isn’t just does it have THC and is it cannabis, but is it a certain particle size, moisture level, etc.? Again, define the quality of your raw materials (specifications) and test for it.

Remember – ranges are your friend. It is much better to say 9-13% moisture than “about 10%”. For your most diligent extractor, 11% will be unacceptable, but for a guy that just wants to get the job done, 13% just may do!

Test your final product AFTER the process. Again, how does it stack up against your specifications? You may need to have multiple specifications based on different types of raw material. Perhaps one strain with a certain range of cannabinoids and terpenes can be expected for production.

Review the data and trend it. Are you getting lower yields than normal? This may be due to an issue with the equipment, maybe a blockage has formed somewhere, a valve is loose, and simple preventive maintenance will get you back up and running. Or, it could be that the raw biomass quality has changed. Either way, having that data available for review and analysis will allow you to identify the root cause and prevent a surprise failure of your equipment. Murphy’s law applies to the cannabis industry too.

  1. You are able to predict and prevent most failures before they occur
  2. You increase the longevity of your equipment
  3. You are able to predict with a level of confidence – imagine estimating how much product you will product next month and hitting that target – every time!
  4. Business risks are significantly mitigated – a process that spews out metal, concentrates heavy metals or does not kill microbes that were in the raw material is an expensive mistake.
  5. Your employees don’t feel like they are running around with their hair on fire all the time. It’s expensive to train new employees. Reduce your turnover with a less stressed-out team.

Takeaways

Maintaining a competitive edge in the cannabis industry is not easy, but it can be made easier with the right team, tools and data. Our recommendations boil down to a few simple steps:

  1. Make sure you have a chemical or mechanical engineer to understand, optimize and standardize your process (you should have one of these on staff permanently!)
  2. Implement a testing program for all raw materials
    1. Test your raw materials – cannabis flower, solvents, additives, etc. before using. Work with your team to understand what you should and should not test for, and the frequency for doing so. Some materials/vendors are likely more consistent or reliable than others. Test the less reliable ones more frequently (or even every time!)
  3. Test your final product after you extract it – Just because your local regulatory body does not require a certain test, it does not mean you should not look for it. Anything that you specified wanting the product to achieve needs to be tested at an established frequency (and this does not necessarily need to be every batch).
  4. Repeat, and record all of your extraction parameters.
  5. Review, approve and set a system in place for monitoring any changes.

Congratulations, you have just gone through the process of validating your operation. You may now begin to realize the benefits of validating your operation, from your personnel to your equipment and processes.

Why Employee Training is Your Key to Financial Success

By Shannon Tipton
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So, there you are, pondering your finances, there are many expenses and costs that go into running your business and when your budget is already tight, should you add or increase training to the expense list? Why frustrate yourself, looking for ways to train people, when you could be focusing on things like technology, product development or sales that help with business growth?

We all know that product development and sales are important. But what differentiates training from other expenses is that while on the surface training might appear as an expense, it’s not.

Think about this analogy: We know one achieves a greater plant quality and yield by using advanced cultivation practices. That said, the quality of the plants also greatly depends on the lighting, the nutrients and the nurturing they receive. The training and development of your people depends on the quality of effort you give them. Therefore, it is not so much a cost as it is an investment in the growth of your people, and when your people grow, you experience business growth.

Why invest in continual training?

The answer as to why continual training is important can be summed up in four points:

  1. Well trained employees = happy and loyal employees.
  2. Happy employees = educated and happy customers.
  3. Happy and educated customers = customer loyalty.
  4. Customer loyalty = increased business revenue

Any break in the chain breaks the relationship with the customer. There isn’t any business right now that can afford to lose a customer over something as intuitive as keeping people knowledgeable and happy.

This approach does, however, come with a caveat. Your training needs to be amazing and it needs to stick. You need to be willing to give your people the tools they need to succeed, and amazing training doesn’t come with a low-price tag. It requires not only a monetary investment but the investment of time and energy of the entire team.

Consider this, according to a Gallop research paper, happy and well-trained employees increase their value, and dedicated training and development fosters employee engagement, and engagement is critical to your company’s financial performance.

In short, this means your happy people will be earners for you. They will help you exceed industry standards, sell more and hang around longer. This means lower turnover costs.

Who doesn’t want that?

Educated and loyal employees lead to increased financial results

According to another Gallup study, businesses that engaged workgroups in continual development saw sales increase and profits double compared to workgroups that weren’t provided with development opportunities. The pressure to succeed among competitors of the cannabis industry is intense and rewards high. Having a good product is a start, but if your customer does not trust you or your employees…then what?

You can have the best product in the world, but if you can’t sell it, you still have it.

Can your business survive without trained people and loyal customers? The growth rate for legalized cannabis will be $73.6 billion with a CAGR of 18.1% by 2027. Plus, total sales of illicit cannabis nationwide were worth an estimated $64.3 billion in 2018, projections call for the U.S. illicit market to reduce by nearly $7 billion (11%) by 2025.

Those customers are going somewhere, will they be coming to you? Are you and your people prepared to earn potential customer trust and build critical relationships? Can you afford to miss being a part of this growth because your people were not carefully trained and your customers were uninformed about you, your product and your services?

A common adage is, “What if I train them and they leave? What if you don’t and they stay?” – where does your business stand?

Time for non-traditional approaches for high-impact training

With the rapid growth of the industry with ever changing regulations, new types of edibles, better product with exponentially more options – your customers will demand higher quality standards and expect your people to be in-the-know. This requires “just-in-time” knowledge as opposed to formalized training delivery.

Disappointingly, only 34% of businesses feel their overall training is effective. So, as the industry continues to evolve, it is important to know how to make your programs as effective as possible for your people. The traditional training that has failed corporate America is not the answer for this non-traditional cannabis industry. The need for new and non-traditional training methods will be critical for your people to be efficient, productive and adaptable to react to fluctuating business needs.

Six areas to focus your non-traditional training

1) Build a strategy

As the gap begins to widen and the competitive “cream of the crop” starts rising to the top, you will need to take the initiative in training and upskilling employees. This means planning future training efforts and reimagining current ones.

The steps involved in creating a training plan begins with establishing business goals. Ask yourself what business factors and objectives you hope to impact through training? You will also need to decide what critical skills are needed to move the business forward. Start your training focus with high-impact skills. These are the skills, if mastered, that will lead to customer loyalty and education. Ultimately impacting your bottom-line.

2) Target skills that build relationships

Building relationships is often placed in the category of, “soft skills.” However, this is a misnomer; “soft-skills” are core strengths you will need for your business to stand apart from your competition. This goes beyond smiling at the customer. Your business requires adaptable, critical thinkers who can problem solve and communicate effectively. Soft skill training is never “finished.” Therefore, consider how reinforcement is going to be delivered and how coaching will evolve.

3) Personalize training to individuals

Many traditional training programs approach people with a “one size fits all” mentality. Just put all the people in all the classes. This is a common failed approach. Each person on your team has individual skills and needs that require attention. This means creating and planning the delivery of training programs to address specific strengths and skills challenges. Not everyone will be at the same level of knowledge. If you are hiring for culture (which you should) rather than specific skills this means providing ongoing support at different times. This requires developing a training plan that allows people to choose their training path.

4) Create digital learning spaces

Ensuring employees make time for learning was the number one challenge talent development teams faced in 2018. One way to combat this challenge is putting training in the hands of people through platforms they are already using. Most notably, their cell phones and mobile applications.

Training should be created and delivered through multiple platforms (mobile and on-demand), where the training can be personalized, and offer ongoing job support. For example: Consider training to be delivered through mobile apps, text messaging or instant messenger. This type of training is targeted, direct, can be tracked and supports “just-in-time” delivery of help. Help when the people need it and when the business needs them to have it.

5) Make training interesting through gamification

There is a general misunderstanding about how gamification and training programs work. Many business owners discard the idea of gamification because they believe it means turning training programs into video games. Understandably, owners do not want critical and regulatory compliance training to be like a game of Candy Crush. What is important to realize is that gamification is a process of building a reward system into training that imitateschallenge games. Allowing people to “level-up” based on skill or knowledge acquisition. The use of badges, points and leaderboards encourage participation in online experiences. Thus, making training interesting and more successful.

6) Plan to educate your customers

As stated, providing customer training around your products or services is a fantastic way to differentiate yourself from competitors. It also boosts customer engagement, loyalty and enables them to gain more value from you.

Customer training is now considered a strategic necessity for businesses in every industry and within the cannabis industry, education programs will play a critical role in attracting new customers. Although, keep in mind your new customers do not need “training.” They need educational awareness. Consider the education you are providing customers as an onboarding process. Thoughtfully designed educational content can help customers make the right decisions for them, and you are there every step of the way.

Choose a different path for your training efforts

Your business needs a non-traditional training plan to help your people to be better, smarter, faster than your competitors and to gain customer trust and loyalty. Cannabis is a non-traditional industry, why box your business into traditional corporate training models proven to be unsuccessful? Your business and your people deserve better.

Contact Learning Rebels to learn more about what we can do for you to help you develop training tools and resources that will make your people stand above the rest.

Human Resources and the Cannabis Workforce

By Aaron G. Biros
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Cannabis businesses encounter a variety of problems when hiring and managing employees. Some of those are issues that every business runs into and some of them are quite specific to the cannabis industry. Chris Cassese, co-founder and managing director of Faces Human Capital Management, has some solutions for cannabis businesses facing seemingly daunting workforce management issues.

Cassese co-founded Faces HCM with Caela Bintner after two decades of working in the human resources and sales strategy across a variety of financial institutions. He oversees software platform development, daily operations, sales, and business development for their organization. Before co-founding the company, Cassese held a variety of operational and product development roles during his ten-year tenure at Merrill Lynch, worked in marketing at HSBC and was a sales and performance advisor at Insperity, a professional employment organization. Faces HCM is a professional employment organization that handles workforce compliance, education, and other HR needs for cannabis companies. They work with companies like Dixie Elixirs, LivWell and Women Grow, among other cannabis businesses.

Chris Cassese, co-founder and managing director of Faces Human Capital Management

According to Cassese, the cannabis industry faces a roughly 60% turnover rate, which is on par with the turnover rates in retail and call centers. Those are industries that typically have high turnover rates simply because the nature of the business. However, Cassese says it doesn’t have to be so high for the cannabis industry. “It is easy to say it is just high turnover by nature, but we found there are some steps that we can put in place that seem relatively easy, but are key tenants of Fortune 500 companies’ hiring strategies,” says Cassese. “Engaging in a needs-based analysis with companies will help us figure out exactly what’s going on.” They start by looking at the onboarding process, or what happens immediately after an employee is hired. “We start by looking at their pay rate, employee handbook and the paid time off policy, which are some of the points that a lot of the owners are familiar with coming from other high-end industries outside of cannabis.” He says things like swag bags, free ski passes after reaching quotas and other perks can keep employees engaged on the team. “Things like that go a long way and can reduce turnover by up to 20 or 30 percent,” says Cassese. “Sometimes [business owners] are so stressed with regulatory compliance that they don’t have time to tackle these issues so employee dissatisfaction often starts with onboarding procedures.” That can include anything from analyzing the overall compensation structure to making a video displaying the company’s vision, mission and values. “There is no panacea for reducing turnover. It requires conducting a needs-based assessment, taking pieces of what we know works well in other companies and bringing that to the cannabis industry.” Making an employee feel like they are part of the team can help boost retention and keep turnover low.

One area they often help companies with is performance reviews. “Performance reviews are a big part of any business,” says Cassese. “You can’t make progress if you don’t know where you’re going. If you don’t know how you’re doing you can’t get better.” Looking at the supervisor level, they have often found employees have never given a performance review before. “We implement processes to teach them how to deliver positive or negative performance reviews and help make them feel comfortable delivering that,” says Cassese. They might have employees perform a DISC analysis (dominance, influence, steadiness and conscientiousness), a personality test akin to the Meyers-Briggs test. “From this we can help figure out the stressors and motivators of people and create effective teams,” says Cassese. “If an employee might be more outgoing or humble, high-spirited, results-oriented, analytical or good working on teams.” These are approaches to workforce management that have been adopted from Fortune 500 companies.

Caela Bintner, Co-Founder and Managing Director of Faces Human Capital Management

Cassese says one of the most overlooked items for companies are proper I-9 verification forms. This goes back to basic record keeping and documentation, but if overlooked, companies can get hefty fines for improper record keeping. “You are supposed to have a separate binder, in a separate locked drawer where your I-9 forms are housed, but a lot of people don’t know about that, which could come back to bite them in the form of large fines” says Cassese. “Businesses can’t afford to have sloppy record keeping. We help businesses take a look at their process and how they put their files in the cloud or physical locations, which is an area where companies often need guidance.” Civil fines can reach up to $20,000 for mistakes on I-9 forms.

Employee education is another crucial aspect of managing the workforce. Faces HCM has a learning management system that gives companies the ability to push education to their employees. Education is of course a broad term and can cover a wide variety of needs for employees. “We can help them take leadership, teamwork, excel, OSHA, safety classes and more,” says Cassese. “Training that shows you active listening, empathy skills and other types of training can really help budtenders deal with customers appropriately.” They have developed customized training programs for cannabis companies expanding beyond their own state too. “As you find certain cannabis companies growing in different states they want to create a repeatable, consistent and predictable experience,” says Cassese. “Putting those standard operating procedures online is important to streamline the process and ensures that you are creating a learning or education plan to meet your employees’ needs.” That can look like requiring employees to take an online course once every quarter, or offering them books on subjects pertaining to their specific job function.

Little things like improving the employee experience, implementing an education program and keeping up with employee records can make or break a business. They all add up to solid workforce management, which if done correctly, can enhance a business’ bottom line and keep employees working for you.