Human resources (HR): the business department that shall be responsible for ensuring that employees are treated fairly, adequately compensated and able to work in a safe environment. Yet many employees resent their company’s HR department and feel that HR members don’t really care about them.

A recent survey from Safe data recovery shows:

In the meantime, 50 percent of Americans believe that an HR department does not contribute at all to a toxic workplace.

So where is the sweet spot? Is it possible for HR departments to increase their efforts to better satisfy and retain employees? The short answer is yes.

The long answer suggests that today’s HR teams need to embody exactly what their department names mean: humanity. What I mean is that HR leaders need to stop treating employees like numbers on a spreadsheet and more like people.

This is an ideology that we see steadily increasing in the cannabis industry. At the beginning of 2024 there was 440,445 full-time positions in the legal cannabis industry — an increase of 5.4 percent from 2023. But the turnover rate for cannabis is among the highest of any industry estimated 40 percent to 60 percent. Even that one National Cannabis Industry Association surmises that this turnover is due to the infancy of the legal cannabis industry and its lack of time and resources to focus on the level of education that large corporations have.

To combat this high turnover and grow a loyal employee base, cannabis business leaders today are establishing innovative HR strategies centered on a humanistic approach. Here’s what they focus on:

Create a compassionate culture: The first step towards cultivating a humanistic approach to HR is to have compassion and empathy with your staff. It is important to empathize with your employees and take the time to understand their needs. Just as you would expect them to do when handling customer accounts or sales.

Brendan McKee, co-founder, CFO and COO of Silver Therapeutics, a privately owned and operated cannabis retailer and multi-state operator, went on record in a Authority Magazine interview saying that it is important to “prioritize listening to and supporting (your) team members, and understand that their satisfaction directly affects customer care. You have to be empathetic and put yourself in other people’s shoes. It’s much easier to be kind and it’s much more effective when you’re running a business.”

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This level of compassion has led the company to achieve a 90 percent plus year-over-year retention rate as Brendan indicated in a interview with BudsFeed.

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Invest in employee growth: Providing opportunities for career development, regardless of whether the employees are budtenders (cannabis sales associates) or manage the entire cultivation process, is crucial to maintaining satisfied staff. This training can take the form of a comprehensive onboarding program, ongoing industry training, or industry-agnostic professional growth opportunities.

Especially in the cannabis industry where regulations, laws and research are changing day by day, education is critical to the growth of individuals who want to grow their careers in cannabis. And so cannabis leaders prioritize providing this training as a critical aspect of keeping their employees happy and their business afloat.

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Offers competitive compensation and benefits: A survey from 2021 was found 63 percent of people quit their jobs because of low pay. While cannabis companies today are typically smaller than large corporations, their leaders understand the importance of fair pay for their employees. Cannabis companies not only offer attractive salary packages, but also extensive benefits and bonuses.

According to a Vangst examinationhigh-value cannabis workers experienced a significant jump in wages over the past year as “top salaries rose 4.7%.” By comparison, the average wage increase in non-cannabis industries is 4.1 percent.

Implementing HR technology to enhance the employee experience: Recruiting platforms and employee engagement software help cannabis HR leaders make data-driven decisions to improve employee retention.

Marc Rodriguez, CEO of Green Leaf Business Solutionsa provider of HR and payroll technology to the cannabis industry, was quoted in Cannabis regulator describe the various HR technology solutions he finds most valuable. “HR management systems (HRMS) and applicant tracking systems (ATS) offer modules for performance reviews, goal setting and employee feedback. Time and attendance software can help monitor work hours and productivity, while learning management systems (LMS) can track staff training and development.”

These types of systems enable cannabis HR leaders to monitor employee satisfaction, increase employee engagement, and optimize their retention strategies with data that has already been available to more traditional industries for decades.

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It is important to note that the cannabis sector is a community rather than an industry. Business leaders, employees and even consumers are united in the collective mission to support the legalization of cannabis and promote the healing and recreational use of the plant. It is this sense of community and camaraderie that sets the cannabis industry apart from traditional business sectors and motivates cannabis leaders to tailor their HR programs to people they monitor.

Having a humanistic approach to HR is critical to the longevity of any business. That said, as cannabis companies begin to put more emphasis on their people, the days of labor shortages and high turnover rates will begin to fade.