"The impact for employers is that when you are doing a criminal background check, if the person has a conviction under federal law for marijuana possession, I think that the employer cannot and should not consider that anymore," says Kathryn Russo, employment attorney with Jackson Lewis in Melville, NY. "To me, that's one of the big outcomes of this."

Russo adds that the initiation of Health and Human Services and the Attorney General to change how marijuana is classified under federal law could take a lot of time, as it must first initiate a petition that would then be considered by the FDA to see marijuana's safety and addictive properties.

Speaking to Reuters, Julie Schweber, a senior knowledge adviser at the Society for Human Resource Management, said, "With the war for talent and the labor shortage, especially in some lower-paying jobs, it's tough to find and retain folks — so many are deciding to not test, except for safety sensitive jobs." Companies with multiple operations in different parts of the country face an added challenge, she said, because laws differ from state to state.

Because of that tight labor market, Russo says, "Many employers are moving now to drop marijuana from the drug test panel for pre-employment tests."

Related: Marijuana rates up among workers during pandemic

Overall, with Biden's signal that he wants to legalize marijuana, and the fact that state and local policies are also changing, employers need to pause and consider what they want their marijuana policies to be and if they are in step with regulatory changes.