Why Be A B Corp?
This month for B Corp month I wanted to explain why I think it’s the only option for any business starting in this age
We launched TownSq with the goal of becoming a B Corp and successfully achieved this in April 2019.
If you’ve not heard of B Corp, it’s a certification for private companies which helps to evidence just how importantly you value your wider social and environmental impact.
It’s a very rigorous process which continually evolves. A score of 90 five years ago should be more difficult to achieve as time goes on and we collectively understand more about what matters leading to raised standards.
B Corp is a shortening from benefit corporation, but not all benefit corporations are B Corps.
Why B Corp? Why Now?
One day, every business will have to be this way. Our planet demands it.
There are a couple of key reasons why it is becoming increasingly important for companies to consider the B Corp route, but the key thing here is that we all exist in a dangerously broken economic system.
For businesses who believe they have a role to play in changing these systems, shift the defaults, and create a thriving planet and prosperous future for us all, there’s B Corp.
For us at TownSq, we had the balance of being a social business, and needing to prove our commercial credibility. We work with property people who need to know that we are serious about our financial sustainability and communities who need proof that we are serious about our social responsibility.
By being in both worlds we didn’t feel we could be a traditional social enterprise or charity, and didn’t feel either of those routes gave us the flexibility we would need to adapt to whatever was thrown our way.
It was also important for us to know what was working, what wasn’t, where our blind spots are, and where we can aim to improve in the future.
Being a social venture is a challenge of its own, and I’ll write more about that in the future, but being a B Corp is an incentive to stick to the tricky path.
Since becoming a B Corp I’ve become a B Ambassador as CEO of TownSq and delivered talks to thousands of people about B Corp and why it’s important to us, and me. There’s a big appetite out there for people looking for answers to these challenges we’re collectively facing.
For B Corps it’s recognising that the 20th Century model doesn’t work in this age. Business has a role to play in raising standards for us all.
Being a B Corp
Businesses are assessed in five areas of how they run their business and make decisions:
Governance - what you can do to enhance policies and practices linked to your mission, ethics, leadership, ownership accountability, and transparency.
Workers - what you do to contribute to your employees’ financial, physical, professional, and social well-being.
Environment - what you can do to improve your overall environmental stewardship.
Community - what you can do to contribute to the economic and social well-being of the communities in which you operate.
Customers - what you do to improve the value you create for your direct customers and consumers of your products and services.
These five categories are quite different to every other assessment tool we’ve ever used. They go deep, and cause you to really scrutinise the level to which you can truly say you’re doing things right.
B Impact Assessment
The five areas are assessed using the BIA - the B Impact Assessment tool.
You can do the B Impact Assessment online for free, it takes a while but it gives you a good idea of what you’re doing well and where you could improve processes.
There are hundreds of questions, which change depending on what kind of company you run.
The two broad themes are what you do and how you do it.
Your goal is to score over 80 to be able to apply to become a B Corp, but there’s a seriously high level of scrutiny before you get that far. Ideally, you need to be starting at around 100 in the hope that you might scrape past 80 after that process.
You can’t just tick boxes and wait for the certificate to arrive in the post. This isn’t a club where your membership auto renews.
The scrutiny and rigour is what builds value into B Corp status. Not just anyone can say they’re a B Corp.
We had a leap from when we originally certified to our recertification.
After three years of being a B Corp your mind focuses in. Every decision we take now is filtered through the question “what would a B Corp do?”
This led to new processes, initiatives, and policies that were tested based on their ability to create more equity and address the five areas detailed earlier.
The how answer comes from asking other B Corps, deeply considering the consequences to decisions, and balancing that with what is commercially viable.
It’s recognising how giving unlimited holiday and generous training allowances to your team might look great on your website or job ads but when scrutinised the truth is that your workers take less than the average amount of leave and nobody has used the training fund for years.
It’s changing the focus away from what companies say they do, to what they actually do in every day and action.
If you’re curious, you can look up every B Corp on the planet here to find out how they scored, and where their strengths and weaknesses are.
Community
B Corp is a global movement.
There are over 1,000 B Corps in the UK as of 2023, and this has grown massively from under 400 in 2020.
Every B Corp signs a declaration of interdependence and commits to a path in line with the values of the community.
There’s an online forum to ask questions, offer preferential deals, find other B Corps who can becoming suppliers, as well as just being able to learn from best practice.
You have lots of opportunity to meet other B Corp leaders in person, there are an increasing number of B Local groups across the UK, as well as national gatherings. There are also online meetings, workshops, and working groups to keep momentum on key issues.
What’s In It For Me?
Being a B Corp isn’t an entirely virtuous endeavour.
There are quite a few reasons to point at for why companies choose to certify.
The thing that I can say for certain is that it has helped us in each of those areas. We’re seeing more businesses like ours go down this route and for it to become the norm. We’ve been able to build valuable relationships across the UK which has led to partnership, learning, and trade. We’ve been able to stand firm on our mission as we engage with investors and contractors. Consistently we hear in interviews how people want to work for companies that are evidently purpose-driven and go beyond just the talk. We’ve been able to tell our story far and wide, and with more authority thanks to the certificate. We’ve certainly improved our impact as I’ll go into more later.
There have been projects that we know we’ve been able to bid for and score higher thanks to the B Corp status, and customers we’ve been able to win who are looking for more from their suppliers.
This what’s in it for me? question might seem a bit shallow or counter to the movement, but I think it’s an important one to ask. I’ve spoken to many CEOs, Chairs and founders who have struggled to make the case to their board to go down this route, so being able to point to these outcomes helps to make a stronger argument that builds a better community of B Corps.
Recertifying
We’re going through recertification right now and every B Corp doing this will recognise how much you really want to see that score leap significantly!
Being a B Corp isn’t about getting the nice certificate and standing still.
B Corp is a continuous process.
I wrote about this in Unnecessary Obstacles. Often you don’t know if what you’re doing is really the best thing. Being a part of a community like B Corp creates means that you’re in an environment that challenges and educates you to improve.
Your permanent mission is to become a better business, and being a B Corp gives you countless ways to do that.
B Corp Alone Won’t Save Us
It’s not perfect, and it won’t save the planet all alone. There are lots of dissenters and there must be. There was recently an article published in the Times which criticised the B Corp movement and hundreds of B Corp leaders signed a response letter questioning the coverage.
I think there’s a lot of value in being challenged, it can help the whole movement to focus on developing, improving and growing.
There’s plenty for the movement to improve on, it is primarily a London-centric community, I’ve felt patronised by some B Corp leaders and felt unwelcome and that my face doesn’t fit, but this is improving and things like B Local are giving a way to make B Corp relevant to our more immediate environment.
We have a big job to raise awareness outside of the existing bubble, and to make sure it isn’t just a middle-class pursuit. B Corp can be of benefit to all, but it won’t just happen. We must all work hard at it.
I mentioned our recertification, we’re currently over 12 months into that process. The rapid growth, demand, and interest has created service bottlenecks, but there are new ideas and solutions coming along constantly, so there’s hope that these are just growing pains.
Being a B Corp
If you’re B Curious, keep an eye out for any upcoming B Local or B Corp events in your area. If you’re local to one of our spaces we regularly run B Curious events, so let us know if you’d be interested for us to get one scheduled in the diary sooner.
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