The surge of open jobs and hiring needs created by the widespread legalization of marijuana has left many employers ill-equipped to handle onboarding and training on such a large scale, especially those without an HR specialist.
To make matters worse, there’s no national standard for on-the-job training for cannabis businesses. Therefore, it’s up to you, the employer, to investigate state laws, potential compliance risks, and industry best practices to meet the requirements for each individual position in your business.
But is it enough? Your business has been under a social and legal microscope from day one. Now you don’t just need good employees, you need great employees. Experts in their field. But how do you get there? How do you steer new hires, as well as your business, on a path to success? It all starts with well-executed training.
8 Training Solutions for Creating Top Employees
Here’s a list of the best tips and tricks for fulfilling industry training needs and helping your employees make the most of their career in the cannabis industry:
- Customize training. The needs of an employee working in a dispensary are different from those working as a grower or trimmer, right? Their training requirements should reflect their unique roles. When your HCM system includes an online Learning Management System, you can build out courses with specific videos and content for each of the unique duties your workers may have as part of their position.
- Educate employees on your industry. Ensuring employees have a complete understanding of all the moving parts of your business benefits them as well. You might want to provide instruction on sales techniques, growing fundamentals, dispensary operations, or state and federal policies impacting compliance as part of your training. The more informed your employees are, the less likely they are to damage your business.
- Record training videos. One-on-one training might seem like a good idea for your business, but it’s not always feasible or efficient. Recording training videos creates a valuable internal resource for your team and helps with accessibility as your number of hires grows.
- Designate mentors. You can choose trusted individuals to help with training and who will act as permanent mentors and reference for new hires. People are less likely to make mistakes if they feel comfortable asking for help, so make sure they know who to go to!
- Monitor the progress of training. Checking in at certain intervals throughout the first year encourages communication between you and your new hires. Using regular assessments and skill tracking for each role can also help identify areas of weakness in your training methods so improvements can be made moving forward. LMS systems often include goal management features, so your employees can keep track of their goals and improvements.
- Beware of compliance. Even though there are few regulations that address training a cannabis workforce directly, state and federal mandates can still target your business operations for potential compliance risks. For instance, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) may question the safety and health hazards within your operation. By educating your employees or having them take classes with these organizations, you can prevent unwarranted investigations, accusations, and other complications down the road.
- Offer access to certifications. Certifications aren’t technically a requirement to work in a dispensary or in a growing facility. However, encouraging employees to obtain specialized, certifiable training benefits your credibility and security against compliance audits overall. These certifications can be obtained through a growing number of colleges as well as cannabis-focused institutions.
- Think outside the box. Don’t limit yourself to standard onboarding practices. You might consider having new hires visit corporate locations, rotate to other parts of your business, or fulfill an annual re-training to ensure your workforce is truly as prepared and confident as possible for their role.
EPAY Systems can help make training a breeze. Create customized training plans, upload training videos, and keep track of employees’ training status with our easy-to-use (LMS)—a key feature of our HCM system geared to hourly workers like yours.
Easier with EPAY
EPAY Systems offers various workforce and learning management features as part of our LMS. We help you manage and create training modules and assessments unique to your industry, track the progress of your new hires, and achieve real results through goal management. The best part is that it is user-friendly, includes employee self-service, and is accessible through our unified human capital management portal. Give your employees access to training anytime, anyplace, so they can become experts for your cannabis business. Take a quick tour and request a demo today!