A responsible business is a good business
Increasingly, people are demanding more sustainable products and services. They genuinely care about supply chains and the ethics of the business that they are buying from.
In short, they want to buy from responsible and caring suppliers. That’s where being a Certified B Corp comes in.
The B Corp certification is part of a growing movement of companies demonstrating how they are using business as a force for good in the world.
However, to become one you have to go through the B Impact Assessment.
The B Impact Assessment is a rigorous assessment that measures a business’s performance across five key impact areas:
#1. Governance
The systems and processes your business has. This is what drives the overall direction, effectiveness, and accountability of what you do, how open and accountable you are, the businesses overall integrity, and what you’re delivering in relation to your company’s purpose.
#2. Workers
How you treat your workers. Are they all fairly paid and working within fair and safe conditions? Do you have a diverse group of people working with you, engaged and committed to the company’s purpose?
#3. Community
How you are impacting your local community. For example, do you impact any underserved communities? Are your team allowed time off for community service/ volunteer work? Do you involve the local community in your work at all?
#4. Environment
How your business impacts the environment. Who do you share your environmental impact reviews with? Do you use renewable energy? What are you doing to monitor and record your company’s waste?
#5. Customers
The positive outcome that you create for your customers. Do your products or services increase the economic opportunities for underserved groups? Or do they help people to lead healthier better lives? How much money did you make in your last financial year directly from your positive impact products/ services?
We partnered with B Leaders Adam Garfunkel & Shayla Meyer to enable the growth of the B Corp movement in the UK, and became a certified B Corp ourselves!
Here’s their story.
Junxion seeks to facilitate other people’s impact. We integrate strategy, branding, impact measurement and reporting for organisations committed to rethinking profit for the common good. We became one of the first organisations in the UK to certify as a B Corp and to be trained as B Leaders.
As B leaders we are always looking for new ways to promote the B Corp concept and to support businesses in completing the impact assessment and certification process.
Discovering that Impact Hub King’s Cross were looking to certify as a B Corp themselves was an exciting opportunity, and we soon agreed on acollaborative partnership to deliver workshops where prospective B Corp applicants could go through the certification process together.
We delivered free information sessions, and a series of workshops at Impact Hub, leveraging their meeting room space, team expertise and network. In doing this, we were able to lead several businesses through the certification process – one of those businesses’ being Impact Hub King’s Cross itself.
Impact Hub King’s Cross is now the first collaborative workspace in the UK to certify as a B Corp, and that’s something that we are really proud to have facilitated. One of the other workshop participants has also now certified; and that is just the beginning, with a further two hub members interested in certifying and several more from the wider network.
Working with Impact Hub King’s Cross has helped us widen our audience and support more businesses in becoming Certified B Corps.
You can find out more about the B Corp movement here.
