The best part of the cannabis industry is having diverse employees so HR needs to start marrying it together to determine what will work best for their workforce. We’re not thinking about “trends” here, it tangible things that you can do today to make a real impact in your cannabis business in the next couple of months.
First, let’s be honest and say that no matter what you read, the ability to strategically find and keep talent, pay people properly, and provide benefits are the most important jobs in human resources. Period.
Why retention? According to the latest HR Impact Survey from Aptitude Research Partners who studied 508 organizations and their 2018 priorities and practices. The top priority for companies of all sizes is RETENTION.
What are the 3 things you can do to impact RETENTION?
1. Renewed Focus on Learning Systems
This is an important shift in the cannabis industry. For a few years, we were seeing a decline in interest in learning systems. This is partly due to the industry still being mostly small “mom & pop” shops (small businesses) because of legalities restricting their growth, but that is now changing
Now that the cannabis industry is starting to grow, industry leaders have a greater understanding of training technology and it’s becoming more mainstream, learning and how to modernize it are the focus. It’s about creating learning systems that provide not just personalized options, but making those options mobile and bite-sized.
This will impact the individual learning needs that each employee has and have them receive it in a way that meets their personal preferences. All these things have an impact on your workforce, from the way it is tracked and reported to the way it feeds things like employee training to be qualified for a management position.
2. Employee Well-Being
There has been a noticeable shift from “wellness” to “well-being”. In the past employers have been primarily focused on creating tools to monitor health, count steps, and possibly even encourage healthy eating habits.
They called that wellness. The difference is now they see the value of modernizing and using technology that goes beyond physical wellness and now includes financial tools. This shift to focus more holistically on the employee’s needs externally will help alleviate the time employees spend worrying about these things while at work.
This will continue to gain importance as more of the “Boomer Generation” retires and their children are faced with the financial and medical needs of their parents. Organizations that provide tools to help them will be more highly desired.
3. New “Digital Manager” Role
This concept of having systems that enable managers to use a learning platform is becoming a real disruptor in the cannabis industry for HR and other business leaders. The desire to go beyond capturing data to combining employee and organizational data in ways that have been almost impossible to do in the past is fast becoming what leaders are looking for.
With technology offering options now to do that, it frees up time that HR teams used to spend on manually manipulating data for internal leaders to make assessments of situations. Further, putting that power of prediction and prescription into the hands of leaders on the go via mobile is now an expected goal. This data mobility, in theory, should also change the way that employees and managers lean on human resources.
Instead of considering HR there just to answer questions, we are starting to see a shift in the cannabis industry for HR leaders to interpret the learning data. For the employee, the benefit (and impact on retention) is that they are more empowered by the technology. By having it understand their needs and interpreted them in that way, it provides a more personalized experience for their managers too.
So, as a human resources leader, which ones resonate with you? Which ones do you think you can embrace today to make a difference in your cannabis business?
Let us know what you think.
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