Beginning our B Corp Journey
This is the first in of a series of articles which hopefully will not just track our journey, but may inspire others to consider, becoming a B Corporation.
But before we start a little reminder of our mission statement here at Great2:
We’re on a mission to empower local entrepreneurs to achieve their goals, create growth and positively impact our community.
Big words for a small team of just 6 people, but we are fuelled by the belief that many people have the same desire;
they want to see local businesses succeed,
they want to see them grow and be successful,
they want to see these local companies impact the local community in a positive way,
they want to see these local businesses in some way reducing their impact on the planet,
and hopefully leaving the world physically a better place.
It may sound like a tall order, but we want to build a business that can be measured by the highest standards. A business that does not just spout the words, but actually can prove it walks the talk.
The question is how do we achieve this?
After much research and many discussions between the Great2 leadership team we have set ourselves the goal of becoming a registered B Corporation within the next 3 years.
For those who are not familiar with B Corp, it is a certification process a company can elect to go through, its externally verified by B Labs, and it ensures that the business achieves high standards in social and environmental performance, transparency, and accountability.
Starting the process
The process starts by completing the B Impact Assessment. This consists of answering questions across the five key dimensions of:
Governance
Workers
Customers
Environment
Community
The maximum score for the Assessment is 200 and you need to achieve a score of over 80 to achieve B Corp Status.
From initial assessment to tracking progress
The Assessment questions are extensive and it took a couple of hours to even thinly populate our initial response. Even doing the initial run through highlighted how measure/fact based the process is and that one area we really need to improve our measuring and tracking of metrics and action plans.
We need to be much for deliberate in our plans and the tracking of results.
So, how did we do with our initial set of entries? Well, to be considered for B Corp you need to achieve a score of 80 or above in the assessment.
I am glad to report that we hit an acceptable 68 on the first submission.
So, our next step is to go away and do the thinking in order to build out a plan that will get us beyond a score of 90.
Yes, 90! We are serious, we believe that business needs to be a force for good and so we are not wanting to just creep over the line.
As it can be seen in the assessment results above, the key area for focus is in the area of the “Environment”.
Which was surprising as we thought we were doing some good things – we only use renewable electricity and we recycle where possible.
However, where we fell down was not having clear plans for de-carbonising the business and more importantly having the necessary measures in place to show the impact of these plans.
Planning for progress
So, over the coming months the focus of the leadership team will be the development and execution of plans that are initially focused on the key areas of Environment and Governance.
The first step in the process will be the creation of two ‘V2MOMs’ (a simple framework we’ve adopted for writing our business plans); one for Environment and one for Governance which will be required to be signed off by Great2’s Directors.
I’ll write again soon with more details on what the V2MOM framework is and how we will look to use it in achieving our B Corp Goals
In the meantime, if your on a B Corp Journey we’d love to hear how you’re getting on. Or if you’d like to learn more, just drop me a line on enquiries@great2.co.uk
Andy
