Vitality As the industry matures, benefits will need to keep pace. Creating personalized benefits that engage workers has been a major challenge for the cannabis industry as it enters a maturation period. To improve high turnover and employee dissatisfaction, many businesses have brought in unions to proactively support workers’ rights. As a result, nearly 300 dispensaries and 36 grow facilities have organized under the United Food and Commercial 5 Workers Union. One of the union’s areas of focus was employee benefits. According to the HUB survey, half of cannabis industry Working with an experienced benefits advisor who is on respondents identified retirement plan options as a the pulse of new analytics capabilities, cannabis businesses priority. And the unions have fought for — and won can develop a multi-year plan to ensure implementation is — normalization of benefits on behalf of the workers – streamlined and effective while not being overwhelming. including 401(k) plans, as well as health and voluntary Delivering the best benefits can come at a high cost, and benefits. This presents an opportunity for cannabis cannabis businesses looking for creative ways to enhance companies to stand out from the crowd by using data their benefits programs can also explore captive solutions analytics to determine what benefits their employees want to maximize their offering while minimizing cost increases. and need. Given the union impact coupled with ongoing struggles related to high turnover,6 personalized employee benefits 5. UFCW, “Cannabis Union,” accessed October 9, 2024 based on data and analytics can have an outsized effect in 6. Headset, “An analysis of employee turnover in cannabis retail,” July 13, 2022. the cannabis industry. Organizations that use data to drive decision-making are better able to tailor their benefits program to meet the needs of their employee population and deliver a Quality Employee Experience (QEX). Case Study A cannabis-adjacent real estate business experienced a large renewal increase due to an employee’s child requiring expensive prescription drugs, totaling more than $200,000 in Rx claims alone. By joining HUB’s Cannabis Captive, the client was able to carve out their pharmacy plan to reduce specialty drugs claims to $5,000. 4