A Guide to SOP Writing for Cannabis Quality Assurance

April 2, 2020

With the right preparation and training, you can pursue a career in the cannabis industry and find success. This new, growing industry is multifaceted and requires qualified individuals in many areas, from technical writing to lab analysis to branding, to name just a few. How can you get involved?

If you are interested in the cannabis industry, learning more about the area of quality assurance is one way to take on a significant role. This area is important to the development, cultivation, and distribution of cannabis products.

Keep reading to learn more about the fundamentals of quality assurance, starting with how to write standard operating procedures (SOPs).

The Importance of SOPs

Standard operating procedures are useful for any cannabis business, from cultivation to retail management. SOPs are a form of documentation, often developed by trained cannabis quality assurance professionals.They are an integral element for communicating the way things should be done. These documents ensure:

All employees carry out their responsibilities according to a standard
Risk can be tracked, analyzed, and managed
Instances of errors are reduced or eliminated, so there are no compromises to cannabis plant cultivation, packaging, processing, or other operations

The main idea is that SOPs keep everything consistent. Whether new staff is being trained or an operation is expanding, documentation ensures that the quality of operations will not suffer. At every level, the cannabis business requires attention to detail. SOPs are one aspect of how such attention will be most effective.

SOPs outline standards and provide instruction

How Cannabis Quality Assurance ProfessionalsCreate SOPs

If you are interested in playing an important role in the industry,cannabis quality assurance courses can get you started and introduce you to the development of things like SOPs. Some of the things that go into developing these documents include:

Analyzing a task, e.g., how to clean and sanitize a grow room
Consulting government regulations to make sure they will be met
Drafting a procedure or an illustrated guide
Testing the SOP and making necessary adjustments

The development of SOPs will reveal the different ways that many tasks may be done, which means a quality assurance professional can also use SOPs as an opportunity to make sure the business is doing things efficiently.

The development of SOPs involves balancing a number of different concerns

The Elements of a Good SOP

The background research, testing, and quality control of the SOP itself should be reflected in the document. This does not mean that all of that information is included; it means that the document communicates its purpose clearly so that staff can focus on the task at hand. Here are some of the necessary elements:

Who does the procedure
Why the procedure is necessary
When the procedure must be done
The steps of the procedure

If any specialized vocabulary is used, it should be clearly defined. In all cases, the purpose of the SOP should be clear to both the quality assurance professionals and to the employees who must adhere to the SOP. Once an SOP is implemented, it should be tracked and feedback from employees should be solicited to make sure it is effective and serving its purpose.