Team members are the key to an organization’s overall success, especially as it relates to the dispensary experience had by customers. Regardless of the industry, finding and retaining top talent is often a struggle, but it is even more challenging in the cannabis industry where turnover occurs quite frequently. This is why it is critical that every team member be treated with the utmost respect and appreciation. To that end, the implementation of investing in the team starts well before a team member is on-boarded and continues even after they exit (let’s be honest, people are going to change jobs).
According to a 2018 Gallup report on the team member experience, “All of the individual moments of an [team member’s] experience play a role in how a worker feels about an employer’s purpose, brand and culture. These feelings directly affect [team member] retention, engagement, performance and development.”
Feel State’s philosophy is to attract individuals who are passionate about cannabis and are aligned with our mission of helping to better connect individuals to themselves, each other, and their communities through the use of cannabis.
Team members should have a path and opportunity to prove themselves in order to work their way up from budtender to assistant manager to manager and believe the following reasons highlight the necessity of treating team members like our most important customers:
1. Team members are extremely valuable brand ambassadors - they are the everyday face of the company and have the ability to make lasting impressions on customers, which lays the foundation for the impression a customer will ultimately form.
2. Team members can drive (or sink) revenues - they need to be empowered and put in the proper position to make appropriate decisions on their own to help the customer, which will show that their opinions are valued and give them purpose to the role they are performing.
3. Team members who are happy are more productive - they tend to work harder, collaborate better, contribute more, and be more efficient, which in turns translates to reduced turnover, recruitment, and training costs.
Nowadays, team members are often looking for a workplace experience that can provide a culture that truly values them along with fostering a feeling that they are contributing to something bigger than themselves (in addition to the more traditional benefits). This is something Feel State wants to be known for and, in turn, we believe it will better position us to attract and retain top talent.
By investing heavily into team members, we believe this will correspond to a significant positive impact on all of the customers entering the dispensary as well as the overall community in which we serve.
