The cannabis market is booming both in the US as well as worldwide. Businesses that are equipped will flourish while others fail as this new market becomes more competitive and strictly regulated.
Your cannabis business will be better prepared for success if you have a solid, legally valid cannabis Standard Operating Procedure template.
Cannabis SOPs are an important element of any successful cannabis business. Forte helps in the conception, development, and implementation of solid cannabis SOPs for your cannabis dispensary.
How Can SOPs Help Your Cannabis Dispensary
A cannabis SOP template improves the efficiency of your cannabis business by ensuring that all processes – from cash handling to safety protocols to product tracking – are completed in a standardized way that gets you confidently through compliance reviews.
SOPs are essentially the guidelines for running a successful cannabis business.
How To Write Effective Cannabis Sops
Here are some tips for writing your procedures:
- Structure SOP correctly: Your SOPs must be written in a way that guides the reader through a clear, step-by-step procedure from beginning to end. Don’t use vague phrases, instead use clear simple language.
- Organize your document into logical sections: Organizing your paper into logical steps and headings will make it easier for the reader to follow along and retain the details you’re providing.
- Make sure the reader understands the key aspects: If there are any critical details the reader needs to be aware of, make sure they aren’t hidden in the text and that their purpose is clear.
- Update your SOPs: They are dynamic documents that need to be updated as soon as new internal processes and procedures are established. To make sure they continue to serve their intended purpose, be sure to schedule regular reviews.
Cannabis SOPs for Dispensaries include but are not limited to:
- Store Operation Procedures
- Cash handling procedures
- Compliance procedures
- Video Surveillance procedures
- Hiring and employee procedures
- Security procedures
- Inventory procedures
- Marketing procedures
- Customer relationship management
- Reception procedures
- Point of Sale procedures
Tips To Create Dispensary SOPs
Here are 5 Tips To Create Dispensary SOPs:
Find the right expert
The first step should be to find an expert to write a cannabis Standard Operating Procedure template if you lack the knowledge or time to do so yourself. The best expert for your company is someone who is familiar with the state’s legal requirements for compliance, has expertise in planning or managing successful cannabis operations, and can create an extensive set of SOPs that meet all of your procedural requirements.
Involve Multiple Parties
Your business is not run by a single person. The primary objective of standard operating procedures is to make it quick and simple to share, teach, and coach someone on how to do tasks efficiently.
SOPs are tools for communicating. The documentation should ideally be created with input from the employees who have been or will be performing the work. Also include the store manager, the compliance expert, and the team at the dispensary in the drafting process to get their suggestions and advice.
Create Checklists
Checklists are used in a number of different situations to ensure that each step is performed in the correct order. They are also used to keep track of tasks that have been completed. Any forms or checklists provided as part of an activity should be added to the SOP after they have been attached to the procedure at the appropriate points.
Sometimes detailed checklists are created especially for a specific activity. In those circumstances, the SOP ought to provide at least a general description of how the checklist is to be created or the foundations upon which it is to be based. The file containing the activity outcomes and/or the SOP should then contain copies of specified checklists. Don’t forget that the checklist is a component of the SOP, not the SOP itself.
Use Simple Language
A well-written SOP should first briefly explain the task at hand or the procedure being followed, as well as any regulatory requirements or standards. The scope should be stated to indicate what is covered. Any specialized or unique terminology should be defined, either in a separate definition section or in the relevant discussion section. Indicate the sequential procedures that should be followed, broken down into key parts, for example, potential interferences, equipment requirements, employee requirements, and safety considerations. Mark important information in bold to capture the attention of the user.
Long passages of text can be broken up using diagrams and flow charts, which also allow the reader to quickly review a series of steps.
Maintaining Your SOP Over Time
Keeping SOPs updated is the best strategy to ensure their usefulness. The most important bit is maintenance. Understand that your company has just invested a lot of time, effort, and resources into creating these documents.
Cannabis SOPs can easily become out-of-date without periodic review and revisions, which would be a complete waste of the time, effort, and financial investment that you and your team have put in. We advise that most SOPs be reviewed at least every six months in order to prevent this from happening. Certain SOPs can require more frequent review, especially if the procedure they describe is modified or updated.
Bottom Line
It takes a lot of work to develop a complete set of SOPs. Some businesses might be able to afford to hire a cannabis industry consultant to collaborate with their team to create these important documents. However, several others decide to take on the challenge themselves.
An accurate and comprehensive representation of organizational procedures and quality assurance criteria will be ensured through collaboration with all of the team members.
