Our B Corp journey: What's the business case?

For us, becoming a B Corp in 2021 was the natural step for a company formed nearly 200 years ago with the aim of enriching our business community and making the region the best place to live, learn and work. 

B Corps are businesses who have been verified by B Lab and its one of the most robust certifications that assesses whether a company meets the highest standards of social and environmental performance, and whether it runs responsibly in terms of its treatment of workers, its supply chain, and its impact on communities.

So, what have we learnt so far and what are the real benefits of becoming a B Corp?

1. It shows you’re committed to purpose driven change

B Corp has provided a way to convey what we value and what we find important. We’ve learned that this is really big part of being a B Corp and our reports are showing that the vast majority of people who are interviewing with us are quoting it as one of the reasons why they want to work for us. But the B Corp accreditation also allows us to show that it's not just all talk, but we are taking action. An example of some of the action we’re taking is working with our suppliers to audit their environmental and social impact and if they do fall short, helping to provide them with information about how they can operate in more ethical way. We’ve also supported over 200 companies to get started on their Net Zero journey through our Aiming to Net Zero workshops and Lunch and Learn events. 

2. It guides you to better performance

We achieved a score of 92.7 in the B Impact assessment which is 12.7 points above the business average of 80. But as the assessment is largely multiple choice, with evidence needed to prove you have delivered the options you select, this still allowed us to evaluate where we were and look at how we could make improvements. 

As our journey as a B Corp goes on, it has three main functions for us as a business. Firstly, it prompts us to take action in areas that we may not have considered fully. For example, the B Corp assessment asks whether you are tracking demographics of employees, and while we had started the process this hadn’t been fully explored. Now, we have introduced a self-reporting tool in our HR system so employees can tell us their nationality and how they identify. This allows us to track how inclusive we are and ensure we are employing people from diverse backgrounds. 

Secondly, being a B Corp allows us to check what we’re already doing and try and improve this. Before becoming certified, we provided statutory parental leave but now offer enhanced leave to ensure greater wellbeing of our people.

Finally, it reinforces what we have already started and encourages us to think about our impact more broadly. We’ve started looking at social value accounting which means assigning a monetary figure to your impact and assessing how your actions can reduce costs in society, for example through calculating the impact and value of the volunteering days we offer to staff.

3. The B Corp community helps you grow

We’re grateful to have been welcomed into a community of other business leaders who can support us to grow. When we started to think about how we could better track the environmental impact of home working and commuting, we reached out to other B Corps to see how they’re doing it. From those conversations, we’ve begun tracking how colleagues get to and from work and we’re now looking at how the different modes of transport can be measured from a carbon reduction point of view. 

We’ve also partnered with Ecologi, a fellow B Corp company which plant trees and invests in climate projects around the world on our behalf. This helps to offset our business emissions, but also the emissions which come from our employee’s home activities. So far, we’ve sequestered over 1,000 tonnes of CO2 and have planted over 10,000 trees. 

Being part of the B Corp community has allowed us to consider in more detail our impact on the local community and our members. 

We have exciting projects in the pipeline, ranging from skills projects to support some of our city’s most deprived areas, to large regeneration projects that will transform areas of our region. All will be revealed soon. We’re also continuing to work closely with our partners Visit West and Bristol Ideas, who deliver projects across the city such as the Bristol Light Festival and Festival of Ideas. 

4. It helps create a culture of positive change 

The process of becoming a B Corp gets you thinking more deeply about the impact you have and sends a signal to individuals in the organisation that the company is committed to placing B Corp values at the heart of the business strategy. The result is a stronger community and culture where positive ideas emerge. 

After becoming a B Corp, we looked more closely at our values. We decided that it was important for us to be recognised by staff and customers as trusted, professional, friendly, influential, collaborative, and flexible. By encouraging staff to think about these during their day to day, we are helping our people to bring the best out in each other while inspiring the region through our actions.

A real B Corp bonus has been the permission it’s given to colleagues to expect more of us but also understand that their positive actions will be recognised. Our work on Mental Health, Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion have been accelerated by staff passions and their comfort in the fact that their employer is up for the conversation. We hold monthly Equality, Diversity and Inclusivity meetings with employees which encourage open conversations about the topic. Our aim now is to offer external programmes to promote ED&I in our communities. 

5.It differentiates you from the ‘greenwash’ crowd

Greenwashing is when green PR or marketing is used to promote the idea that an organisation’s products or aims are green, when the actions and steps have not necessarily been taken to justify that representation. 

A Harvard Business Review B Corp Study found that, “Certifying firms often highlighted how a B Corporation certification would help them stand out, “in the midst of a ‘greenwash’ revolution” among large companies, and “help consumers sort through the marketing hype to find businesses and products that are truly socially and environmentally responsible.”

Becoming B Corp certified has helped us show our stakeholders and customers that there is genuine action behind our words.