 With thousands of employees working in the cannabis industry, the industry has become a significant employer in the states that have legalized cannabis production, processing, and consumption. Ensuring that the industry is creating a satisfying work environment and a fulfilled workforce is key to attracting and retaining top talent and provides certainty to business planning.
Workers today not only seek this sense of purpose within their places of work, but have also been known to accept less compensation, if fulfilled in other ways, offered “nontraditional” benefits, and/or opportunities to engage in authentic community engagement activities. As the leading cannabis industry organization, NCIA desires to see our member businesses thrive, with tens of thousands of satisfied and fulfilled workers, eager to participate and add their talent and passion to our work. We also seek to be an industry that improves the lives of not only our members’ patients, clients, and customers, but their communities. “I’m really excited to have this opportunity to do a deep dive into employee engagement as it pertains to the cannabis industry” says Marc Ross, Chief Instigator at Needle Consultants, LLC. “It is my belief that by gathering a baseline of this data and identifying opportunities for improvement, we’ll be able to help create a healthier and more satisfying environment for the industry’s workers, which in turn, will elevate the industry overall.” In this first Cannabis Industry Employee Engagement Survey, we seek to gather baseline data regarding: · Overall Worker Satisfaction · Worker Needs and Desires around Benefits · Worker Desires around Community Engagement opportunities Who should take this survey? Employees of direct-to-plant cannabis companies, including cultivation, retail, and processing and manufacturing from MIPs and concentrate companies, with a heavy focus on Colorado-based companies. The survey is anonymous. Cannabis companies that self-report participation of over 90% will receive recognition by NCIA in the future report. One lucky participant will even win a complimentary Seed To Sale Show 2018 registration. How long does it take to complete the survey? The survey takes approximately 5 to 10 minutes to complete. How long is the survey open? The survey will be open for collecting anonymous responses between now and December 1, 2017. We believe the results of this survey will provide immeasurable value as companies within the industry seek to build happy and fulfilling work environments. The results will be analyzed and compiled into a comprehensive report which will be shared with the cannabis industry at large.
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 Writing a set of values is easy. Development of an authentic set of values that are strategically integrated into your business takes work, planning, and commitment. As is the case with a company Mission and Vision, in order for a set of company Values to effectively reap the Return on Investment demonstrated by others with comprehensive Corporate Social Responsibility programs, these Values must pass the strategic, integrated, and authenticity tests. Writing up a list of values, putting them on your website, hanging them up around your business, and giving every employee a copy of them are really just exercises in communications and marketing. If you’re not “living” your values and running all business decisions through the lens of your values, you run the risk of both the marketplace and your employees calling you out. In other words, you can’t “purpose-wash” your business and expect to achieve success. One only needs to look at the example of Enron to demonstrate how NOT to implement a values initiative.
Source of Values So, from where does this set of values originate? Is it handed down from “on high” by some universal, good-business deity? Does some purpose-filled CEO write them up on the back of a napkin over lunch? Perhaps a Millennial intern copied them off a competitor’s website? The fact is that your company’s values need to be unique to YOU – your business, your workers, your products or services, and your culture. They should contain aspects of your company’s mission and vision for alignment and consistency. They should address how you will treat your employees, your customers, and any other stakeholders deemed to be important. Therefore, the best way to ensure that your company’s values are, well, valued internally and respected by your external stakeholders is to crowdsource them from amongst the people who know your company best – your employees. A values exercise can be incredibly revealing for upper management and incredibly empowering for your lower-level workers. What is it about your company that makes you unique? You may be surprised what you find out is important. By crowdsourcing your values from a variety of workers, you will also tend to get away from those “standard” values that, frankly, every business ought to practice and are considered “givens” (safety, high quality product/service, integrity, honesty). Remember, your business isn’t remarkable if you have the same values as every other business or are doing that which is “expected.” Types of Values In addition to trying to incorporate aspects of your company’s Mission and Vision into your Values propositions or goals, I would suggest that your values (and I suggest no more than 5-8 values) should reflect any of the following areas: excellence in your particular field of product/service; community engagement aspirations, treatment of workers and worker expectations/norms; and corporate culture. Values based upon the uniqueness of your particular company will be most authentic. Lastly, if there are areas of concern around your line of business (for example, conflict minerals, disparate pay, child labor, poor environmental practices, etc.), I would strongly recommend adopting values to address those particular concerns – and then LIVE those values no matter what! Implementation As mentioned above, a company’s values do zero good if they just hang on a wall or show up on a website. They need to be used. They need to be taught and emphasized to all new employees. The extent to which a worker exemplifies your company’s values can be a metric utilized during performance evaluations. Your values need to be considered when making decisions around supply chain. If one of your values is to pay all workers a living wage, it could be uncomfortable if you’re not considering wages of workers in your supply chain. The same would go for environmental practices. Being sustainable or conscious of environmental impacts is a great company value; not so great if you’re not considering or treating your suppliers with the same level of scrutiny. In fact, you may quickly find yourself under attack for having “fake” or “insincere” values if you’re not pushing your values through your supply chain, to all of your employees/contractors, and considering all of your stakeholders. Writing a set of values is easy. Development of an authentic set of values that are strategically integrated into your business takes work, planning, and commitment.  On Wednesday, October 18, Needle Consultants' Chief Instigator Marc Ross will be moderating a panel at the 2017 Cannabis Sustainability Symposium on Corporate Social Responsibility. Sponsored by the City of Denver, Department of Environmental Health and the Cannabis Certification Council, the panel will feature Liz Swanson (B Corporation), Dr. Elizabeth Bennett (Assistant Professor, International Affairs and Director of the Political Economy Program, Lewis & Clark College), and Laura Rivero (Yerba Buena). This panel will open the second day at 9 am. Tickets are available at: http://www.cannabissustainability.org/#tickets
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