Lafayette, Colo., (April 13, 2020) – PRESS RELEASE – urban-gro, Inc., an engineering design services company that integrates equipment systems into indoor cannabis cultivation facilities around the world, has announced gro-care, a virtual support solution for cultivator equipment and facilities across North America.

The gro-care Managed Services offering focuses on preventing downtime while driving business continuity for cultivation facilities via remote monitoring, optimizing yields and labor resources with staff training and workflow audits, and minimizing avoidable emergencies through offsite support from urban-gro’s team of experts in maintenance, commissioning, design, IPM, procurement, and IT engineering.

The urban-gro gro-care monthly subscription includes the following suite of solutions:

• Remote Engineering: A dedicated team of maintenance and cultivation experts help customers set, monitor, and analyze all types of digital cultivation equipment, from fertigation controllers to HVAC equipment.
• Resource Optimization: Our cultivation space planning team will help customers to assess labor allocation after reductions/expansions in workforce, while taking on non-core tasks, like product procurement, recurring consumable purchasing, setting maintenance schedules, and more.
• IPM Support: urban-gro’s team of plant scientists help customers integrate proactive plans to prevent pathogen emergence, with recommendations for nutrients and pesticides that have been screened by the compliance team.
• Commissioning: Our commissioning personnel will support your team by both teaching them how to operate and repair equipment in your cultivation, as well as providing troubleshooting support, by leveraging our years of experience with a diverse set of assets.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has required everyone to act quickly to ensure the safety of their employees and their communities. As a North American leader in complex equipment systems, urban-gro quickly recognized that we needed to change our approach to business,” remarks Bradley Nattrass, CEO of urban-gro. “I asked our leadership, operations and cultivation teams to create a solution that will work in today’s world of social distancing.  As the saying goes ‘necessity is the mother of invention’ and today we offer gro-care to our customers in the United States and Canada. The gro-care team will operate virtually while our design, engineering and Environmental Sciences divisions continue to operate efficiently during the pandemic.”

“The gro-care service gives our customers the ability to leverage all of urban-gro's expertise through a monthly subscription, at a fraction of the cost of full time, in house operations,” says Colin Ferrian, Director of Enterprise Solutions. “From setting up and operating your environmental controller, to sourcing compliant products that help protect our customers’ crops from powdery mildew, we will equip our customers to handle issues remotely.”

urban-gro will provide a webinar on training and monitoring of fertigation controllers on April 15, 2020 at 10:00 MDT. To register, for the webinar, visit https://bit.ly/2ygLqij. For more information, please contact Colin Ferrian, Director of Enterprise Solutions, at gro-care@urban-gro.com.

As 2019 came to a close, tens of thousands of customers across multiple U.S. cannabis dispensaries were impacted by a data breach linked to a point-of-sale software company.

Cannabis businesses are particularly vulnerable to cyberattacks due to the vast amount of personally identifiable and protected health information that they are required to collect and store, as well as any trade secrets they maintain in their company databases.

Here, HUB International, an insurance broker that provides business and personal insurance as well as employee benefits across North America, outlines some cybersecurity best practices for cannabis cultivators and distributors to help them combat cybercriminals.

1. Limit the number of people that have access to your secret sauce.

This is especially important when sharing details with third-party vendors. When workers are harvesting crops, or a cultivator is renting land from farmers and planting on it, proprietary information should be kept in the hands of just the few who need it—and no one else.

2. Secure your R&D process.

If cultivators have created a cannabis formula that boosts energy, or reduces anxiety or pain, these “recipes” are their intellectual property—it’s what gives them a competitive advantage. Growers should consider the way they store the information behind the R&D of their cannabis crops. Is it on an electronic file, or a computer desktop? What type of credentials do people need to access it? While most businesses will use a third-party cloud service, many growers maintain their own servers because of this risk.

Distributors must also do their part to protect cultivators’ R&D information. Many cannabis distributors have access to their grower’s proprietary R&D information so they can speak intelligently about the product, and understand which products are best for buyers with different medical symptoms. Cultivators should ensure their employees don’t reveal enough to open their supplier to a potential cyberattack.

3. Institute strong employee oversight rules.

Every employee does not need to have access to every sale, or the entire database of proprietary customer information. Businesses should consider delegating jobs behind the sales desk. Give each employee the access they need to do their job—and that’s it.

4. Know where and how your buyer information is stored, and understand how it can potentially be breached.

If employees are scanning driver’s licenses, or even if the business keeps paper files, consider where they are stored. Maybe it’s in a secure area off site, or on a protected network. Maintain compliance with HIPAA, state statutes and requirements for cannabis distribution.

5. Explore your cannabis cyber insurance coverage options.

Cannabis businesses are hard to insure for every type of risk. Although this will continue to some extent as long as cannabis remains illegal at the federal level in the U.S., cyber insurance options for cannabis business have opened up and prices have recently come down. Know that cyber policy underwriters will conduct additional due diligence, going beyond the typical policy application, asking cannabis companies what types of information they collect from their consumers, how they store it and how they access that information at a later date.

Editor’s Note: This article was adapted from HUB International’s blog post titled “Cyber Risk: Growing Like Weeds for Cannabis Growers and Distributors."

In the latest of a series of layoffs in the cannabis industry, Canadian LP Canopy Growth announced the closure of two greenhouse facilities and the elimination of roughly 500 employees in British Columbia.

When these significant events occur in a turbulent marketplace, businesses should consider their employee hiring and termination practices to avoid employment discrimination and wrongful termination lawsuits.

While it may be tempting for businesses to hastily hire staff and launch their operations, traditional human resources functions should not be forgotten. Establishing policies and procedures for hiring and terminating employees is critical to protect businesses from employment practices liability (EPL) claims, according to HUB International, an insurance broker that provides business and personal insurance as well as employee benefits across North America.

Here, the company outlines seven best practices for hiring and terminating employees.

1. Build out a formal onboarding process.

Cannabis businesses should take the hiring process out of the hands of a single individual and create a uniform process that can be replicated as the company grows. Make sure the process is the same, whether the company is hiring a cultivation technician or an accountant. Businesses should know and comply with their state’s employment regulations. For multi-state operators, the policies and procedures will have to include those of all states in which the business operates. Companies should consider their employee base and the protected classes they may belong to; for example, businesses with more than 50 employees are subject to Family and Medical Leave Act and other regulations.

2. Compose an employee handbook.

Once a business has a formal hiring strategy, it should be documented in an employee handbook. Employees want and need to know what’s expected of them. A good employee handbook will detail required protocols for timekeeping and vacation as well as behaviors that are grounds for dismissal—all of which can help you when questions and legal issues arise. Get the help of legal counsel in developing the handbook.

3. Keep time religiously.

Businesses should maintain timekeeping protocols that are consistent across locations, and make sure they’re actually enforced so that if management is called on to defend them, they will know when and how often the employees took breaks, as well as how many hours they work daily and weekly. Avoid wage and hour exposure by enforcing breaks and lunch times, as well as pre-approval for overtime, vacation days and PTO. Train managers on proper timekeeping so they can enforce state laws and manage breaks appropriately. Businesses should also make a distinction in their policies between exempt and non-exempt employees as required by law. The business’s HR team, regardless of size, should be running monthly and annual reports to ensure the company is meeting state standards in all areas of employment liability.

4. Document, document, document.

If a business has a problematic employee or a situation that has risen to a level where it needs to be addressed, document the details. Should employees of a protected class engage in an EEOC, class action or personal lawsuit after they’re terminated, management will need this documentation to support its actions.

5. Set a formal and fair termination procedure.

The core of this procedure is well-thought-out details of the company’s review process, including how employee performance is evaluated and what happens when those standards aren’t met. Businesses should spell out which behaviors are grounds for dismissal and describe the termination process. When talking to the employee about their termination, managers should have another employee in the room to avoid claims of mishandling later on. (This is typically someone from HR or the company’s attorney.) Management should determine how the distribution of final compensation, such as medical insurance or PTO, will be handled so they are prepared to answer those questions. These procedures should be spelled out in an employee handbook, which is given to all employees at onboarding.

6. Know who to talk to.

Businesses should retain a qualified employment attorney to help set these policies and procedures and to consult when a unique or particularly difficult situation arises.

7. Get the right EPL insurance policy.

A dedicated EPL policy is key to protecting your business from these risks. An EPL policy will defend a business from claims of sexual harassment, discrimination and wrongful termination, and will include defense costs as well as coverage for government-imposed fines. Claims of breach of employment, negligent evaluation, failure to employ or promote, deprivation of career opportunity and mismanagement of employee benefits plans can also be covered. Businesses should work with their insurance brokers to determine what defense limits they should retain. These limits should be based on the business’s location, clientele, employee profile and what the business sees as its biggest risks.

When discussing the policy with an insurance broker, businesses should consider reimbursement coverage versus pay on behalf. (Do you want the policy to pay your defense costs directly, or will you lay out the money and they’ll reimburse?) The definition of a claim and wrongful act will be different for each EPL policy. Finally, consider your EPL policy’s limit structure. Should defense limits to be outside or inside the coverage?

Editor’s Note: This article was adapted from HUB International’s blog posts titled “Cannabis Businesses Face Heightened EPL Exposure When Hiring" and “Cannabis Businesses Face Heightened EPL Exposure When Laying off Employees."