Marijuana Business Magazine October 2019

Marijuana Business Magazine | October 2019 80 “Have the conversation among key executives about what are the critical positions and what are the key competencies,” said employment law attorney Chris Lamb, a partner with Denver-based Fortis Law Partners. “Maybe it’s more IT heavy or maybe it’s a retail business and more heavy on the sales and marketing side.” Lamb said one of the best ways to ensure a person being groomed for a leadership role stays with the company is to draft employment agreements that outline incentives such as profit-sharing or equity in the business. “That gets them invested in the growth and helps groom those employees to be the next generation to take over,” she said. “If you’ve identified key talent, a great way to get those folks to stay is to give them equity. The nice thing about equity is it keeps employees in place as opposed to cash, when they can walk out the door.” Lamb said it can be beneficial to create employment agreements with existing employees because the company already has had the opportunity to see how they perform and who is ready to advance into more important roles. Without a plan in place, a company can find itself with key positions left vacant when someone leaves. Viridian Staffing, for example, has clients who have openings at the director level or higher and don’t have people who can be promoted from within. But if they had planned while they were hiring for other jobs, they may not have found themselves in that situation, Bradford said. BEGINWHENHIRING STAFFERS Succession planning can be as simple as looking at the potential people have to move into roles with greater responsibilities when you’re hiring them, Bradford said. “Maybe they could be general manager of a retail store within a couple of years, then director of retail operations over six stores,” she said. “During the hiring process, keep potential in the back of the interviewers’ minds. That helps to start facilitating that succession planning.” It’s also smart to talk with employees about their aspirations and provide op- portunities to cross-train or take on work they don’t normally do. “Maybe someone in accounting doesn’t want to be your controller but You have to be brutally honest about what people are capable of and what they’re not capable of. The plans themselves are conversation pieces about how people are performing.” —Jake Heimark CEO of Plus Products Chris Lamb Courtesy Photo