New Study Proves the Medical Benefits of CBD
Much of the cannabis-focused scientific community and business owners are aware of these benefits. However, this study is a welcomed addition to the mounting evidence in favor of treating patients with CBD- as well as calling cannabis medicine.
While the outcome of this study is exciting, there are literally hundreds of other animal/preclinical studies that have demonstrated the potential of CBD for human health. Until the government allows comprehensive double-blind randomized placebo-controlled studies on human populations these studies will continue to pile up without any action or validation. This is a step in the right direction when a study like this comes out since it corroborates the decade of anecdotal evidence that has been seen firsthand. Some of the top reasons cannabis users go to dispensaries is to reduce their use of pharmaceuticals, street drugs, alcohol, and cigarettes.
It is one of the fastest growing markets in the cannabis industry because anyone can use CBD without the psychoactive effects of products with THC. Facts from the published study:
Customers and patients can shop online for vaping oil, topical muscle freeze, and their CBD-releasing transdermal CBD gel pen – the same method of delivery used by researchers for this new study.
This new era of cannabis research is great for patients and for business. Savvy small business owners know that by providing consumers with the option of CBD products, their cannabis business can increase sales. In addition to providing a higher level of customer satisfaction, CBD products hold a higher sales value and will give a larger return as opposed to high-THC products.
In the past decade, the medical community has seen more cannabinoid-related studies than any other time in history. As the industry and medical communities continue to establish cannabis as medicine, it’s only a matter of time until the governments around the world remove cannabis from its list of banned substances without medical benefits. The political implications of the study aren’t lost on the authors. They wrote, “the findings also inform the ongoing medical marijuana debate concerning medical benefits of non-psychoactive cannabinoids and their promise for development and use as therapeutics.” The issue of marijuana legalization and the medical application of CBD are separate. Let us know what you think.
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Employers Dropping Marijuana Testing for Job Applicants
“Safety First, a drug-testing division of Behavioral Health Systems, has had clients remove marijuana from their testing panels as a direct result of changes in state law,” said Judi Braswell, vice president of business development with the parent company, headquartered in Birmingham, Ala. She added that some in certain industries, such as hotel and hospitality, don’t implement marijuana-testing programs due to concerns that firing those who test positive would cause significant staffing issues.
The reasons vary. Some test because it’s required by law, such as with Department of Transportation-covered employees, or because the position is deemed to be safety-sensitive. Others test because they’ve always tested. Many employers in or near states where marijuana has been legalized increasingly are dropping marijuana from drug-test panels.
State-Law Patchwork
In several states – including Connecticut, Maine, and Massachusetts – courts have ruled that an employee testing positive for marijuana has a viable claim against an employer for enforcing drug-free workplace policies.
In 12 states – Arkansas, Arizona, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island – medical marijuana users have certain job protections, so pre-employment screens or random screens could trigger job protections in those states. That doesn’t mean an employer can’t screen for it, pull a job offer or terminate for a positive marijuana test result.
In deciding how to respond to a positive marijuana test, it is recommended talking with a job candidate or employee about when they used marijuana, how they used it and whether they used it at work. This area of the law is moving quickly and at least 17 other states have legalized medical marijuana but don’t yet have anti-discrimination provisions.
Nine states and Washington, D.C., have legalized the use of marijuana use for any reason, but so far Maine is the only state protecting recreational marijuana users in the workplace. Utah and Oklahoma are considering legalizing medical marijuana, and Michigan has a ballot initiative to make marijuana use legal for any reason.
Changing Views in the White House?
In January, Sessions rescinded the federal government’s former, relaxed marijuana enforcement framework under the Obama administration with a memo granting prosecutors the authority to go after anyone violating federal drug laws. But in March, Sessions clarified that he would focus on drug gangs, stating that federal prosecutors “haven’t been working small marijuana cases before” and “are not going to be working them now.”
We still have not seen the Department of Justice (DOP) take any real actions to enforce the law. Trump has promised Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., that Colorado’s legal marijuana industry won’t be affected by Sessions’ actions. Yet any conversation between the senator and the president doesn’t change the fact that marijuana remains a Schedule I controlled substance and thus illegal under federal law.
Additional Steps to Take
Steps HR should take when it comes to marijuana use include:
Uninspired? Cannabis Workers Suffering a Career Crisis
It’s called a career crisis and it’s a key reason why dispensary employees become disengaged. A career crisis can happen to anyone, so it can hit even those who – from an objective perspective – have fulfilling jobs.
Suddenly, the employee is no longer challenged at work and is unable to identify a stepping stone to some activity that will keep him engaged in his current position. This is when the employee becomes bored, unmotivated and may start looking elsewhere for opportunities in the cannabis industry that will satisfy their need to feel valued and worthwhile.
The U-Shaped Cannabis Industry ‘Satisfaction’ Curve
The career crisis typically happens when employees are in their late 40s to early 50s and there’s a biological reason for this dissatisfaction. Job satisfaction tends to follow a U-shaped curve, with young cannabis industry workers tending to be overly optimistic about the jobs they’ll get and the trajectories their careers will take.
As we age, things often don’t turn out as nicely as we planned, and we may not climb up the career ladder as quickly as we wished. Or we do, only to find that prestige and a high income are not as satisfying as we expected them to be. At the same time, high expectations about the future adjust downwards.
Midlife essentially becomes a time of double misery, made up of disappointments and evaporating aspirations. The good news is that at the bottom of the U-curve – when workers are in their mid-50s or so– people tend to make peace with how their life is playing out.
At the same time, the aging brain learns to feel less regret about missed chances, brain studies show so satisfaction starts to rise, climbing out of the bottom of the U-curve.
Focusing on the Cannabis Industry’s Future
A dispensary manager can help, by having a discussion with the employee to help him or her focus on the future. Without clarity and direction, smart cannabis professionals often stop learning, growing and with that, their career plateaus and boredom sets in.
Not only does it leave them feeling confused about what’s next, it makes it very difficult for their boss or mentor to support them to take the next step. Many employees “bottom out” because the companies they work for have failed to develop a growth plan that keeps up with the employee’s advancement.
Breaking Out of the Dispensary Slump
What does a dispensary manager do if there aren’t any clear-cut advancement opportunities or new challenges for the midcareer employee? It’s a phenomenon that happens more often than one might think.
For most employees, the opportunities to move up in their own organization have become more limited across the last few years. In fact, the average employee is staying at the same level for almost 50 percent longer than years ago.
Still, the creative dispensary manager can almost always find ways to accommodate the midcareer cannabis worker. Most Human Resources development budgets focus on the onboarding and training of new cannabis industry recruits because it costs a lot in time and money to replace dispensary employees, so cannabis businesses would be wise in finding missions for employees whose advancement has stalled.
For cannabis companies and HR departments, this means:
In addition to mentoring younger cannabis industry workers, mid-career employees can also seek to be mentored by more-senior people at a dispensary. Often, these senior people have weathered their own midcareer crises and can offer support and advice.
Those at the end of their careers may have gone through this midlife dissatisfaction and learned to deal with this disappointment. It’s important to normalize these kinds of feelings, and maybe senior dispensary workers can relay to their colleagues that this is normal and that there’s a light at the end of the tunnel.
Cannabis Testing Labs & ISO/IEC 17025 Accreditation
Cannabis, however, is in a unique position. Blossoming recreational and medical laws have created an urgent need for independent testing facilities and these discrepancies have created a mess. There’s no federal policy dictating requirements for cannabis testing laboratories.
The lack of government oversight has resulted in a hodgepodge of different laws. In an attempt to introduce rigorous standards to the cannabis industry and now some jurisdictions now require all testing laboratories to meet ISO/IEC 17025 Accreditation standards.
By achieving ISO/IEC 17025 Accreditation it addresses the concerns throughout the cannabis industryregarding insufficient and unreliable scientific analysis by providing our clients with state-required tests that are accredited by an international standard.
Accreditation is critical to the cannabis industry. Cannabis products are consumed, and contaminants and infectants in the flower or oil can easily make their way into your body. For medical patients who might be immunocompromised, this is a big risk and their cannabis needs to be free of dangerous foreign particles.
What is ISO/IEC 17025 Accreditation?
A lot of cannabis consumers put faith in ISO/IEC 17025 Accreditation, it is the International Organization for Standardization is an independent, international body that accredits testing facilities or laboratories so they can be trusted.
ISO/IEC 17025 labs test for cannabinoids, pesticides, and contaminants so staff members are required to meet basic training standards. Stringent accreditation requirements are a good first step toward ensuring quality cannabis is sold and without the weight of the federal government behind the regulations.
Since federal involvement in the cannabis industry is not a reality, some jurisdictions, have turned to independent, third-party auditing bodies to help ensure labs are compliant with state regulations. Some cannabis testing labs have been suspected of fudging their numbers.
The problem is some cannabis testing companies rely totally on cannabis industry income so if you’re not happy and you leave, where else are they going to get business from? Cannabis growers only have to submit a small sample of each batch to be tested.
Requiring ISO/IEC 17025 accreditation for cannabis testing labs helps better ensure that consumers are purchasing high-quality, safe products. However, the accreditation hasn’t been enough to guarantee product safety. Scheming labs and greedy growers can still trick the system. Let us know what you think.
Make Your Cannabis Dispensary an Inclusive Workplace
So now you can check off the diversity and inclusion box on your to-do list for building a great workplace … right? Not so fast. Diversity is only half of the picture. Creating a dispensary culture where people are respected and appreciated requires another level of effort that may not be getting the investment it needs.
The challenge is in having a culture where all employees feel included. It’s a major investment to bring talent into your cannabis organization, so why bring them in if they’re not happy when they get here? You’ve got to get the inclusion part right.
Think of diversity as being like selecting people for a chorus who have different musical backgrounds, vocal ranges, and abilities. The inclusion piece means making sure that those different voices are heard and valued and that they contribute to the performance.
When dispensary employees who are different from their colleagues can flourish, the cannabis company benefits from their ideas, skills, and engagement so retention rate of those workers also rises. To that end, here are six (6) practical strategies for creating an inclusive environment:
1. Educate Your Leaders
Your dispensary’s leadership will be instrumental to your efforts since, at the end of the day, it’s the dispensary managers who’re on the front line with cannabis industry employees and it’s the experience of that manager that is going to make or break your initiatives.
The dispensary training helps make people aware of this form of bias and drives home the importance of modeling inclusive behavior – such as engaging in active listening and encouraging different points of view – in meetings, performance reviews, and other interactions. A cannabis dispensary needs to periodically evaluate its professional development offerings to ensure that managers have opportunities to learn how to better manage diverse employees. Dispensary employees talk about how to deal with real-life scenarios that managers face, such as supervising an employee who needs an accommodation for a disability or a worker who is a single parent with challenging childcare issues.
2. Form a Dispensary Inclusion Council
Consider forming a council comprising a dedicated group of eight to 12 influential dispensary employees and carefully select them for their passion and commitment to inclusion.
You need people who are going to make the time to “roll up their sleeves” and do the work. They need to be “a channel for communication” between the ranks and the C-suite, and that includes advocating for inclusiveness in discussions with top dispensary executives when necessary.
Ideally, councils should be involved in goal-setting around hiring, retaining and advancing a diverse dispensary workforce and in addressing any employee engagement problems among underrepresented dispensary employee groups. Most councils meet quarterly to review organizational feedback, troubleshoot challenges, and, most importantly, carry messages about their work to their senior peers and the dispensary management team.
The councils should be as diverse as possible, with members representing not only different ethnicities and genders but also different dispensary business functions and geographic locations. If this is difficult due to the lack of diversity in the top levels of your organization, make sure council members learn about your company’s diversity strategy from Human Resources.
An inclusion council is sponsored by individual dispensary managers and typically serve as grassroots diversity cannabis business networking events, usually for mid- and junior-level workers who share common backgrounds. They are good inclusion tools and provide a safe place for people to express themselves. Sometimes discussions that arise in these groups can even provide an early warning of issues bubbling up within the cannabis dispensary.
The onus for inclusiveness, however, should not fall on the underrepresented members of your dispensary workforce, whether they be women, people of color or members of other minority groups. Those individuals often don’t have the power or influence to bring about change and that’s where inclusion councils can take up the cause.
Inclusivity Checklist for HR
3. Celebrate Dispensary Employee Differences
One of the most important ways to show employees that you respect their backgrounds and traditions is to invite them to share those in the workplace. Cannabis businesses can promote inclusiveness in other ways, too, with:
4. Listen to Dispensary Employees
Think about the culture you want and how you can create one that is authentic to your cannabis brand while meeting the needs of your employees. We serve a diverse dispensary workforce, but, more importantly, we wanted to make it an inclusive workforce so that means making strategic decisions that align us with that thinking.
5. Hold More-Effective Dispensary Meetings
A dispensary employee’s daily experiences with co-workers are more telling about a workplace’s inclusiveness than anything else. Determine the moments of truth in the cannabis workplace where any individual can impact diversity and inclusion. What makes the most impact? It is NOT what the CEO says, but the experiences that you have with the five or six people that you work with every day.
What are the key moments almost every dispensary employee touches where they can have an impact? Meetings are a prime example, the following ideas for fostering an environment where contributions from everyone are encouraged:
Creating an inclusive mindset is not a linear process so it will take time and a consistent effort and there will be “stops and starts” along the way. Cultivating inclusion is an evolving process with constantly moving targets. You’re never done, and a company’s goals and tactics must evolve along with the needs of current and potential talent.
6. Communicate Goals and Measure Progress
When you can answer these questions, you’re speaking the language of your dispensary employees, legitimizing the business of inclusion and making inclusion a ‘verb’ versus an ideal.
Let us know what you think.
Interact More With H5P to Publish Cannabis Training
H5P enables existing CMSs and LMSs to create richer content. With H5P, authors may create and edit interactive videos, presentations, games, advertisements and more. Content may be imported and exported and all that is needed to view or edit H5P content is a web browser.
H5P is a completely free and open technology, licensed with the MIT license so demos/downloads, tutorials, and documentation are all available for users who want to join the community. Not ones to rest on their laurels, the team behind H5P pushed through after continued success and recognition, including their ‘Best Free and Open Source Software for Education‘ nod from the Open Consortium’s 2018 Open Education Awards.
Interactive Video “Submit Screen”
One of the most popular content types, the H5P Interactive Video was also the subject of a few complaints and report that issues that kept users from submitting all or parts of answers in embedded questions have been solved.
Going further to ensure the functionality works as it should, a “Submit answers” star-shaped button will give students a view of their answers as they send them. This summary will be enabled by default to students when they play the video until the end, but this behavior can be modified.
Open-Ended ‘Free Text’ Questions
Also for Interactive Video, teachers can now allow open writing as an activity and it supports rich formatting, links, and tables as well as it can be graded by teachers, but this must be done manually.
Documentation Tool, Moodle Gradebook Compatible
An unusual yet highly valuable addition to the content type roster, the H5P Documentation Tool features a wizard that will help you create a project’s goals, plan, activities (work), evaluation, and goals assessment; and then make it easier to review, share, and collaborate on.
Now students will be able to submit project documentation as an activity in Moodle, which trainers can grade directly and trainers will also find a brand new interface that will make it easier to overview the document and mark it.
Cannabis Training Platform Enrollment Methods
Enrollment is the process of allowing a user to log in to a cannabis training platform with a username and password, and Moodle Learning Management System provides several ways of managing enrollments.
When enrolling, it is the process of recognizing a user’s identity. It is the mechanism of associating an incoming request with a set of identifying credentials. The credentials provided are compared to those on a file in a database of the authorized user’s information on a local operating system or within an authentication server.
The enrollment process always runs at the start of the application, before the permission and throttling checks occur, and before any other code is allowed to can proceed. Different systems may require different types of credentials to ascertain a user’s identity.
Enrollment often takes the form of a password, which is a secret and known only to the cannabis worker and the system. Three categories in which someone may be authenticated are something the user knows, something the user is, and something the user has.
This is particularly helpful to understand the different methods to manage enrollments in your cannabis training platform, this “menu” turns 19 of the most popular enrolment methods in Moodle offers it in “dishes” laid out in a menu.
Welcome to the “Moodle Enrolment Plugins” restaurant, where everything is free. Bon Appetit! It classifies each one into five (5) categories:
This should give you an idea of each category’s expected usage, how common they are among Moodle-sites, and which ones are a better fit for custom rather than broad case scenarios. It also adds a “spice notice” next to each item to signal the technical difficulty involved in setting them up.
In any case, only two (2) in the whole menu classify as “advanced.”
Budtender Jobs: Getting Hired as a Budtender
Budtender jobs are one of the leading jobs in the legal cannabis industry. The term (derived from “bartender“) positions the career as the face of the cannabis service industry. Most often found in dispensaries, budtenders are the knowledgeable, friendly employees who are there to help medical cannabis patients and recreational customers find the right products to suit their individual needs.
As one of the most sought-after entry level cannabis jobs in the rapidly growing cannabis industry, budtending is a competitive position that requires a variety of service and cannabis-based knowledge and experience. Although budtender jobs are technically more entry-level than other advanced careers in the cannabis industry, they come with many perks for the cannabis enthusiast and allow for major job mobility.
Budtender Responsibilities
Given that the demographics of cannabis users is expanding as stigma withers, budtenders must be able to cater their service to seasoned stoners and cannabis novices. Cannabis legalization has so vastly increased accessibility to a wide variety of products that even regular cannabis users require guidance when selecting a product.
Many budtenders are responsible for facilitating a sale from beginning to end including assisting the customer in selecting a product, then subsequently weighing and packaging, as well as cashing the customer out and distributing all necessary literature as mandated by individual states and municipalities.
Receptionist Crossover
It should be noted that some dispensaries employ budtenders and receptionists interchangeably, especially in smaller establishments. Predominantly, dispensary receptionists are responsible for greeting and checking in patients and customers, processing any forms of required identification and entering information into online databases. Budtender Requirements / Qualifications Securing a budtender job is easier said than done. Especially since cannabis legalization and cannabis culture have been infiltrating popular culture, competition for budtending positions has increased massively. For this reason, candidates for budtender jobs should highlight the most relevant information on their application.
Knowledge of Cannabis Products & Laws
Firstly, (and not surprisingly) budtenders should have in-depth knowledge of cannabis products and state legislation. This is pretty much a necessary qualification for almost all budtending jobs. While employers will bring budtenders up to speed on store layout, it is expected they can learn quickly on their feet.
While many people might consider themselves cannabis experts, the range of knowledge budtenders must have or be able to acquire is vast and all-encompassing. Being a regular cannabis smoker isn’t enough; budtenders should be able to recognize strains and differentiate them from one another by their characteristics and medical benefits.
Budtenders should also be fluent in concentrates, edibles, tinctures, topicals and everything in between, so they can offer informed opinions when prompted by a patient or customer. Having viable hands-on experience working with cannabis is a major advantage when seeking a budtending job, as it makes the job of the managers easier when training new employees.
Customer Service and Sales Experience
While it is generally preferred that budtenders have sales experience, working in an associated industry can also prove an applicant’s fitness for the position. For instance, a consistent background working as a bartender or barista is a valuable experience, as it involves the knowledge and sale of specialty products like coffee and alcohol.
That said, budtending is different from other careers as budtenders are charged with effectively suggesting beneficial products that will stimulate a course of treatment. Part of being a successful budtender involves listening and storytelling; especially in the case of customers who are new to cannabis, budtenders can really inform what people purchase based on their own experience with the products.
Budtender Certification, Education & Training
Since the legal cannabis industry is still fledgling in terms of consistency, exact qualifications for budtenders are destined to change as new developments occur, exacting some regular standards for dispensary positions.
There are several certifications and education/training courses for individuals who want to gain experience in cannabis and budtending before applying, but these should be approached with a discerning eye as there is no regulatory board detailing the efficacy or legitimacy of each program. When searching for a budtender certification program, conduct some in-depth research on a variety of options. Look at what each program offers, whether training is carried out online or in a conventional classroom/hands-on setting. Be sure to compare prices from one resource to the next, so that you are not spending more than you will make back. While budtending can be a rewarding position, the pay usually starts around ten dollars per hour plus tips and ranges to upwards of fifteen. For this reason, make sure not to overspend on certification programs, especially ones whose training is conducted exclusively online. If possible, check out any reviews of training organizations, as well as how many members have been certified and what their success rate is in the dispensary workforce. It’s your investment, so put the time in to make sure it’s worth it!
Budtender Salary & Benefits
In some states, medical cannabis patients who are also budtenders can consume medical cannabis products at work, as long as they are not on the sales floor and are not intoxicated. Often, dispensaries allow budtenders a hefty employee discount, slashing prices on cannabis flower, concentrates, edibles and more, making this a major perk for the economically limited budtender. Working as a budtender means being part of a close-knit community of cannabis culture thespians.
Mentioned above, budtender job wages are often calculated by a sliding scale of hourly rates, though the pay is ultimately commensurate with experience. Most dispensaries allow patients and customers to tip budtenders, driving the hourly rate up higher. Budtenders who are promoted to head budtender or manager will obviously receive pay increases as well. Budtender jobs are valuable springboards for obtaining advanced professional success in the cannabis industry. The job allows for meeting industry professionals and looks great on a resume.
Budtender Drawbacks
Budtender jobs might not be fun every second of every shift, but there really aren’t that many downsides to the job. Like any customer service position, serving a large variety of individuals every day can include some unsavory interactions from rude customers, though budtenders with experience in situations like this can usually deescalate the exchange without major issue.
Depending on the size and location of the dispensary, budtenders may have to grapple with periods of extreme busyness, as well as lulls. Rushes often occur at times when individuals come to and from work, or on nights and weekends. Budtenders must be able to work quickly, without losing their cool. Luckily, some dispensaries cull customers in waiting rooms until the budtender has finished facilitating a customer transaction.
Aside from a relatively modest income, the only other significant downside to budtender jobs is the stigma against the position itself. If you are working legally as a budtender, then technically you have nothing to worry about from a legal standpoint, however, some people still do not respect the cannabis industry or its employees, trying to strip budtenders of their credibility.
There is nothing to be ashamed of when working a budtender job and by acting as a professional liaisonbetween the cannabis industry and its customers, budtenders are helping to erase the still prevalent stigma.
Budtender Jobs: Today
So, you’ve done your research on budtender jobs, considered options for budtending certification courses and dialed in your resume to highlight only the most relevant skills for the job. Now it’s time to apply to a cannabis dispensary. Due to high application rates, it is best to submit to several dispensaries (if not more) to improve your chances of being selected for an interview.
Strongly consider applying to any local dispensaries you consistently visit. Dispensary owners and managers love to hear that prospective employees regularly visit their shop without being prompted to do so. Also, being a familiar face in a dispensary can help establish some credibility since hiring managers are looking for trustworthy individuals, which is a difficult quality to gauge after just an interview.
It’s no secret that knowing someone personally in an industry can help when trying to get hired and this remains true for budtender jobs. Use any contacts who work as budtenders, receptionists, managers, etc. in a dispensary to at very least offer some advice on how they’d suggest going about finding a job. Utilize all resources at your disposal to achieve your desired position.
Wrap-Up The process of applying for budtender jobs varies hugely as there are few professional forums for locating open budtending positions. Sites like Craigslist and Indeed are go-to’s for reaching a wide audience of candidates, but these forums are often too generalized and disorganized when trying to find more than one budtending job at a time.
For this reason, professional-level training resources like Green CulturED is necessary for advancing and streamlining the process of finding your dream job in the cannabis industry.
Fixing Dispensary Engagement Starts w/ Understanding
Although HR practitioners and experts talk almost nonstop about how to build and maintain engagement, the hard truth is your dispensary workforce probably isn’t feeling the love.
According to Gallup, just 33 percent (33%) of American workers are engaged in their jobs. Fifty-two percent (52%) say they’re “just showing up,” and 17 percent (17%) describe themselves as “actively disengaged.” Such numbers have real consequences for your business. Gallup’s research has also shown that engaged workers contribute measurably to the organization:
Understand What’s Happening and Why
Also, conduct an anonymous survey that gives the entire cannabis workforce an opportunity to chime in. Focus your questions on the dispensary organization’s leadership, career development opportunities, company pride and how everyone views their working relationships. Focus groups and town hall meetings can help clarify issues the survey may uncover.
Finally, get a handle on more objective issues by tracking workforce-related key performance indicators by conducting benchmarks against other employers in the area. Diving deep – by both listening and studying data – is key to addressing engagement issues.
That’s because you can’t solve problems unless you really understand them and when faced with engagement troubles, many companies jump straight into searching for a single root cause. They might ask, “Was it because of our recent organizational change? Is it because our CEO has been traveling a lot lately?”
Stop that line of thinking and get out there and listen before you diagnose.
Keep Your Promises
As you gather feedback, make sure HR and the cannabis dispensary leadership is on the same page about what you’re going to do with it. Don’t even bother to ask employees what’s preventing them from feeling more engaged…if you don’t intend to publicly do something with what you learn.
You’ll do more harm to your dispensary culture and employees’ engagement levels if your inquiries don’t result in visible changes in the workplace. If topics come up that are impossible to act on, clearly and honestly explaining why HR can’t take action.
This is particularly important because practitioners are often criticized for being reactive rather than proactive, so you want to “transition” from being human resources and administration to organizational development (OD). The OD process: assess, get feedback, diagnose issues, prescribe solutions, then do it all again.
Be quick to address basic operational flaws and by reviewing and revising a number of organizational policies you are able to improve areas like payroll so that errors became rare. Look for “quick wins for middle management” by providing training on topics such as the Family and Medical Leave Act and how to conduct effective one-on-one meetings.
The emphasis on action is a good step to take. Once leaders get feedback data, they sometimes go into ‘analysis paralysis‘ and can’t decide on a focus area, which results in spinning wheels. The best thing to do is select one (1) or two (2) areas you think will have the biggest impact on engagement and act on them.
Communicate at All Levels
Transparency is at the heart of any plan to attack disengagement because it shows the dispensary workforce respect, whether you’re honestly explaining why a decision was made or demonstrating that executives and HR hold themselves and others accountable. This is key to a great culture.
Culture is really a living, breathing organism, and if you cut off certain parts from others – well, you know what will happen next. While experts agree that engagement begins at the top, but it is the middle managers and supervisors are the most-impactful factors in determining engagement levels in a cannabis dispensary. The quality of dispensary employees’ relationships with their immediate supervisors overwhelmingly determines the level of engagement and can account for as much as 70 percent (70%) of our engagement score. Gallup’s research, however, shows that dispensary managers don’t spend enough time communicating with their direct reports. For example, 53 percent of employees don’t have a clear understanding of how their role contributes to their company’s objectives, and 54 percent believe their colleagues appreciate them more than their supervisors or company executives do. That lack of communication weakens the relationship and as communication improves, more dispensary workers came to understand the growth opportunities available to them.
Have a Plan and Track Your Progress
Improving engagement was about fixing processes and building relationships with both staff and managers across the cannabis dispensary. With the back office functioning smoothly, middle managers communicating effectively, and a program in place to teach employees how other functions operate, the team is more cohesive, and engagement vastly improved.
Importance of Proper Cannabis Sample Preparation
It has become apparent in various cannabis testing facilities and various laboratories (some dealing with cannabis, others engaging in microbial and/or analytical chemistry) that sample preparation is probably the least understood aspect in a laboratory.
The purpose of both cannabis sampling and sample preparation for analytical purposes is to map the results to the real world (or the limited universe that the sample represents) as closely as possible. While this may be a task that is complex in many cases, non- the-less an honest attempt must be made.
As an example, consider when a laboratory receives a cannabis flower. The first stop after logging the sample into the Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) should be the microbiology section. Ideally, the sample will have been taken in the most careful manner as not to introduce microbial (or chemical) contamination that is not intrinsic to the sample.
To place the sample in a sterile diluent, let it sit, and then vortex the sample is not sufficient. This approach causes false negatives and allows a passing product that possibly should have failed into the public domain. The sample needs to be macerated to expose as much surface area as possible.
The food industry uses a stomacher machine for this purpose as do some accredited cannabis laboratories and the point is to expose the surface area to allow the microbial population to be assayed as representatively as possible. In food microbiology, almost always the food is diluted to 1:10 dilution (1 part of food in 9 parts of sterile diluent) and then homogenized by a variety of instruments.
When sampling and preparing dilutions to the plate, bacteria should be considered as particles, not a solute in a solvent at infinite dilution. When a 1-mL aliquot is combined with a 9-mL dilution blank, the probability of transferring bacteria is much higher than when 150 μL is transferred into 1,350 μL to obtain a 1:10 dilution.
The take-home message is that the sample preparation in the cannabis laboratory is an extremely important step and the better the preparation, the more reliable the results, assuming protocols are carried out as verified and written. Let us know what you think. |
authorLilly, the gardener. Archives
September 2019
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