If you’re not familiar with B Corps, it’s an independent certification scheme for businesses that put positive social and environmental programmes at the heart of what they do. Since we started in 2007, we’ve always been a mission driven business, aiming not just to use design and technology to help positive organisations thrive, but to be a model of an environmentally and socially responsible business.
The B Corp assessment therefore gave us the opportunity to take stock of how we’re performing in reality, to ask ourselves some difficult questions and to be held accountable.
It’s no walk in the park. It took us over four months to complete the assessment and there were times at which we started to doubt whether we would even be able to complete it. There were things that we knew we were doing but didn’t have the systems or documentation to prove. However, as we worked to gather this data and document the many good things that we’re doing, we started to realise the benefits of our hard work, spotting opportunities to improve and being inspired by new ideas of how we could run our company.
Having now passed the assessment, we feel that this is just the beginning of our journey to become a better company. We have awareness of our strengths and weaknesses as well as a growing list of things that we can do to improve. Not just that, but we are now a part of the growing community of over 2,000 B Corps worldwide (127 in the UK) with whom we can learn, share experiences and be inspired.
If we’d known how tough the process was going to be, then as a small business we might have decided that it was too big of a mountain to climb. However, now that we’ve done it, we’re glad that we did. We are stronger as a business and have strengthened our mission to achieve sustainability of people, planet and profit.
We’re now a better corporation.
Why not join us as a fellow B Corp? Find out more at www.bcorporation.uk.
Also, watch this space, as we’ll now be publishing a lot more information about our journey to use business as a force for good.
