The Artist Tree financially empowers workers with access to ZayZoon
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How this cannabis business saved its employees over $1 million with early access to their wages during times of need
Results
$1M+
Wages accessed early
8,400+
Payouts since launch
135
Transacted employees
>80%
Access to ZayZoon across all locations
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About
Employees
~310Location
Greater Los Angeles, CA;12 stores and 9 lounges
Industry
Cannabis retail and consumption loungesPayroll Platform
WurkWe ended up not switching payroll companies [because they couldn't activate ZayZoon for three months]. That's when I saw the impact, how much people really lean on ZayZoon.
Challenge
Attendance is Joanne's biggest people problem: late arrivals, call-outs and no-shows across 11 stores. One empty shift strains a lean team and the customer feels it.
Her frontline workforce skews young, a mix of first jobs and longer-tenured staff. She backs it up with a structured three-strike coaching approach and frames it like a sports team: if somebody's out, everyone else has to cover.
But underneath much of the absenteeism, she sees something else: financial stress that employees carry into work.
Before ZayZoon, the fallback was asking the company for a loan. Employees came to HR needing money for car repairs or a bill they didn't see coming, and some were afraid to ask at all. A loan meant a repayment schedule, and a problem if the employee left. "And some companies won't loan you at all. They just say no way."
"If you have that hanging over you, you're thinking about it at work, and maybe you're not the best employee that day because it's giving you anxiety. That turns into a mental health issue, and then you're calling out because of it," says Joanne.
Solutions
A self-described visual person (she was an art major before HR), Joanne made ZayZoon visible everywhere. ZayZoon has its own slide in the new-hire orientation deck. It sits on the payroll dashboard employees already check. And it appears in her weekly newsletter, which reaches deskless store staff who don't have company email.
She has hosted a ZayZoon Lunch & Learn at the Studio City office and welcomed the ZayZoon team into her stores twice.
Then came the moment she saw how much it mattered.
Last year The Artist Tree started moving to a new payroll provider that couldn't turn ZayZoon on for three months, right over the holidays. Employees reached out, upset they couldn't get to their wages. Joanne made the call to stay with Wurk.
"It was around the holidays. My heart was panicking because a lot of them needed the money. We ended up not switching payroll companies. That's when I saw the impact, how much people really lean on ZayZoon."
Employer Spotlight
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Joanne Coghill didn't plan on working in HR. After college, she was working in garment retail when she got, in her words, "thrown into" the personnel department at a wholesaler, back when the field still went by that name. She ran with it. She earned an HR credential through UCLA Extension and later her PHR. She spent nearly a decade as Senior Director of People Operations at digital agency Wpromote, and held HR leadership roles at mortgage, banking, veterinary and direct sales companies.
She joined The Artist Tree in March 2024, drawn by a VP of Operations she had worked with and loved before. Today she leads a three-person HR team supporting about 310 employees across 11 California stores and two consumption lounges, with the company's first East Coast store opening in Farmingdale, Long Island in October 2026. With more than 35 years in HR, she's at the stage where she loves mentoring. And she leads by owning her mistakes: "When they see that I've taken accountability instead of blaming one of them, I get more trust and respect from team members."