How To Staff Smart During A Downturn

By Liesl Bernard 

In April, I published an article in Benzinga encouraging cannabis companies to focus more on retaining top talent given recent layoffs fueled by inflation, lagging federal marijuana reform, and the lack of funding for cannabis companies. 

One of the best practices I mentioned in the article was to bolster full-time teams with temporary staff, consultants, and fractional executives. I’ve received a lot of questions from cannabis companies since then about flexible staffing, the role temporary staff, consultants, and fractional executives play, and the value they offer during a downturn. I wrote this article to answer those questions. 

What is Flexible Staffing? 

Everyone is familiar with full-time employees - where a company hires an employee to do a job full-time. Flexible staffing is where a company augments its team of full-time employees with temporary staff, consultants, and fractional executives. 

There are several reasons why flexible staffing is beneficial to businesses (especially during a downturn): 

• Affordability - Temporary staff, consultants, and fractional executives are more affordable than full-time employees because companies don't have to provide benefits like health coverage and retirement packages, or pay them for overtime and paid leave. 
• Flexibility - Flexible staffing enables businesses to scale up and down their teams based on their needs. Flexibility also has the added benefit of reducing full-time employee burnout by giving them additional support when they need it most. 
• Agility - Pre-badged temporary staff, consultants, and fractional executives can hit the ground running because they don’t need to go through a company’s formal onboarding process or be trained. 
• Assurance - Companies can “try before they hire” temporary staff, consultants, and fractional executives to ensure they’re hiring the person with the right skills and expertise for the job. 

“Flexible staffing is an important part of our staffing model,” said TerrAscend Chief Financial Officer Keith Stauffer. “We’ve built a bench of temporary staff, consultants, and fractional executives we can tap into seasonally, and when new business opportunities arise.” 

If flexible staffing is starting to sound good to you, but you aren’t sure when to use temporary staff, consultants, or fractional executives, you aren’t alone.

When to Use Temporary Staff, Consultants, or Fractional Executives 

Temporary staff are entry-level workers who do a job for a set period of time (ranging from a day to several months). For example, a lot of our clients use pre-badged temporary cultivation technicians to harvest during Croptober. Some of the jobs companies hire temporary staff to fill are: 

• Cultivation tech 
• Post-harvest technician 
• Warehouse picker/packer 
• Manufacturing tech 
• Packaging technician 
• Inventory associate 
• Budtender 

Consultants are senior-level talent with specific expertise that support either a project (ranging from weeks to months) or provide ongoing support. They are particularly useful when you need niche expertise your full-time team doesn’t have. For example, we recently helped a vertically-integrated cannabis operator hire specialized Finance and IT consultants for a systems conversion project. The most common jobs companies hire consultants to fill are: 

• Finance and accounting managers 
• Marketing managers 
• Compliance/licensing consultants 
• Retail managers 
• Operations and manufacturing managers 

And fractional executives are talent who fill VP-level and above roles at companies for a few hours per week on an ongoing basis. They’re particularly useful when you’re starting a business and don’t have the budget to hire a full-time executive, or when you are hiring a full-time executive and need someone to bridge the gap. For example we recently helped a company that is expanding into Maryland and other East Coast states hire a chief marketing officer. The most common jobs companies hire fractional executives to fill are: 

• Chief Financial Officer 
• Chief Marketing Officer 
• VP of Retail 

Awareness of flexible staffing in the cannabis industry remains low because so few staffing firms provide access to temporary workers, consultants, and fractional executives. I’m committed to changing that because of the value they offer companies - especially during times of economic uncertainty. I hope this article helps more cannabis companies bolster their teams and grow their businesses.