Cannabis Best Employer Award Opens for 2027 Entries

Cannabis Business Times just fired the starting gun on its eighth annual “Best Cannabis Companies to Work For” program, and the timing could not be more important. With employee engagement hitting a five-year low across the globe and cannabis industry turnover staying stubbornly high, the companies that get people culture right are the ones pulling ahead. Here is your chance to prove yours is one of them.

Eight Years of Celebrating the Industry’s Best Workplaces

Cannabis Business Times launched this program back in 2020 with a very specific purpose. The idea was simple: recognize cannabis employers who actually treat their people well, bring those companies into the spotlight, and give the rest of the industry a clear roadmap to follow.

Now in its eighth consecutive year, the program has grown into one of the most credible employer recognition programs in the entire cannabis space. It covers both plant-touching operators and ancillary companies based anywhere in the United States or Canada, as long as they have at least 10 employees.

Noelle Skodzinski, Cannabis Business Times’ founder and editorial director, said the mission behind the program has never changed. “We wanted to recognize those companies that truly value people and their contributions and go out of their way to create workplace cultures that demonstrate that value.”

How the Rankings Actually Work

This is not a popularity contest or a self-nomination award. The program is built on real research, conducted in partnership with Workforce Research Group, an independent firm that specializes in workplace analysis and employee satisfaction across industries.

The scoring breakdown is what makes this program stand out from the rest.

• 80% of each company’s total score comes from anonymous employee feedback
• 20% comes from an employer questionnaire completed by company leadership
• All participating employees complete an engagement and satisfaction survey covering leadership, pay, communication, safety, and culture
• Companies that do not rank are kept fully confidential

The heavy weight on employee voice is intentional. It means a company cannot game the system by writing a polished questionnaire about its benefits. What employees actually say matters most. That is what makes a ranking here genuinely worth something.

Companies that earn a spot on the final list get featured by Cannabis Business Times and receive the right to display the program logo on their websites, job postings, and marketing materials. That is a real competitive advantage in a market where attracting and keeping talent is one of the hardest things operators face today.

The Global Engagement Crisis Hitting Every Industry

The need for programs like this has never been greater. Gallup’s 2026 “State of the Global Workplace” report, released earlier this year, delivered a sobering headline: global employee engagement fell to just 20% in 2025, its lowest level since 2020.

“Employees who are not engaged or actively disengaged lead to less profitable organizations.” — Gallup State of the Global Workplace 2026

The financial cost of that disengagement is staggering. Gallup estimates low engagement is draining the global economy of roughly $10 trillion in lost productivity. Every single percentage point of engagement represents approximately 21 million workers worldwide.

And the U.S. and Canada, while leading the world with a 31% engagement rate, still have roughly 69% of their combined workforce either checked out or actively disengaged. That means seven out of ten workers on any given shift are not fully showing up, even if they are physically present.

This is the backdrop against which cannabis companies are competing for talent right now. Companies that know how to build real engagement are not just better places to work. They are more profitable, more stable, and better positioned to survive what continues to be one of the most challenging regulatory environments any industry has ever faced.

Cannabis Has a Turnover Problem That Cannot Be Ignored

The cannabis industry has long struggled with retaining frontline workers. The numbers paint a difficult picture.

Role / Metric	Turnover Data
Annual budtender turnover rate	Approximately 55%
Employees who leave within 8 weeks	Nearly 60%
Employees who stay past 3 months	Only 14%
U.S. overall industry turnover rate	47.2% across all sectors

Retail, cultivation, and manufacturing see the highest churn. The reasons are layered. Regulatory uncertainty creates job insecurity. Pay growth tends to flatten quickly. And burnout from overwork is common, especially in cultivation and processing environments.

High turnover does not just cost money. It costs compliance. A new hire in a dispensary needs to learn age verification protocols, inventory tracking rules, and transaction recordkeeping requirements that simply have no equivalent in regular retail. Every time someone leaves, that specialized knowledge leaves with them.

And replacing that person is not cheap. Estimates put the cost of replacing a single hourly cannabis worker at around $1,500. For mid-level or management roles, that number can climb to more than double the person’s annual salary.

What Entering the Program Can Do for Your Business

Entering the Best Cannabis Companies to Work For program is not just about winning an award. The process itself delivers value, even for companies that do not end up ranking.

Going through the employee survey gives leadership an unfiltered, anonymous look at what their team actually thinks. Most operators say they know their culture is good. The survey tells them exactly where that is true and where it is not.

For those who do rank, the benefits go further:

• Editorial coverage in Cannabis Business Times, one of the industry’s most read trade publications
• The right to use the “Best Cannabis Company to Work For” logo in recruiting and marketing
• Boosted credibility with potential hires who are actively looking for reputable employers
• Access to data and insights about what top-performing cannabis workplaces are doing differently

The 2026 program showed what winning companies look like in practice. Distru, a cannabis ERP platform based in Oakland, California, ranked first overall. The company offers full remote work, comprehensive health care, and free mental health and financial wellness benefits for all employees. Paul’s Boutique, a Maine-based cannabis operator, claimed the top spot in both the cultivation and dispensary categories, built on a culture of collaboration, personal development, and long-term employee growth.

Those rankings did not happen by accident. They happened because those companies made a deliberate decision to invest in their people first.

The eighth annual Best Cannabis Companies to Work For program is now accepting entries. Cannabis cultivators, dispensaries, and ancillary companies operating in the U.S. or Canada with at least 10 employees are encouraged to register. The final rankings are expected to be published in early 2027, continuing a tradition that has become one of the most meaningful benchmarks for workplace quality in the legal cannabis market. At a time when keeping good people is harder than ever, being recognized as one of the best places to work is not just a title. It is a real business advantage, and for the workers who need it most, it is a sign that someone in this industry has their back.

What do you think makes a cannabis company a truly great place to work? Share your thoughts in the comments below.