Other areas did take time, especially around diversity and inclusion as we wanted to make sure we got this right.
But we didn't have to change anything about the way we gave advice. As we dived into the B Corp application, we found that we used the most appropriate businesses already as our major suppliers were B Corps too, so we were working in a way that was aligned with what we were advising about.
We keep our environmental footprint as low as possible by using a Zoom-first approach for client meetings, rather than travelling for face-to-face catch ups. This would have been a massive change back in the day, but it is quite normal now. Nobody wanted to meet on Zoom before Covid, so there has been a shift here even if businesses don’t have B Corp status.
Think more
We were operating as a B Corp before we actually became one, so the process was quite smooth for us. People had said it's difficult, but it wasn’t as hard as we expected. It was rather time consuming though.
We have been able to improve and extend our employee benefits as a result of achieving B Corp status, following the staff surveys we carried out. For example, employees now have more flexibility when it comes to how they work, as well as being able to switch their bank holidays to any day of the year, which means employees who may observe different religious holidays can celebrate these without eating into their annual leave. The B Corp journey made us think more and act on improvements to improve our employee experience.
For the most part, our B Corp journey was smooth. But as a service provider, the difficult part was the interpretation of the questions. We found the assessment to be more focussed towards manufacturers than service providers, which meant the questions didn’t always make sense, or apply to us in the same way. This was definitely a challenge for us.
When it came to making commitments for this year, we have found that we have been quite restricted as a small company, because we don’t have massive profits. a lot of big things companies want to do does cost money, and the smaller businesses can’t commit to huge budgets, so this has been a challenge. If employees want certain benefits, such as a gym membership or unlimited holiday, this costs the business – whilst smaller businesses may want to do things to make themselves better, they may find that smaller profits might hold them back, and this is certainly the case when it comes to B Corp too.
