Being B Corps
The Green Edge has been talking to some B Corps. Here's what we found.
The Green Edge started to get interested in B Corps in the course of writing this recent post, when we learned that the London Interdisciplinary School is partnering with a number of B Corps for its sustainability module. We decided to contact a few B Corps, to find out what certification means for them and to what extent it becomes embedded in their businesses and skill sets.
The B Corp movement is not new, of course. The nonprofit B Lab started in the US in 2006 and to date has certified nearly 5,000 companies worldwide. Its UK arm, B Lab UK has certified around 850 UK companies at last count, including some famous names like Sipsmith and Innocent. Waitrose has even added a virtual B Corp ‘aisle’ to its online store, although we note that none of the megamarket chains in the UK are themselves certified. A reflection no doubt of the need to meet legal requirements - including special resolutions and changes to articles of association - that smaller and nimbler companies may be able to do but leviathans no doubt would struggle with.
For no other reason than the sector struck our interest, we decided to contact four B Corp companies in the office services and supplies sector. Graciously, all four granted us a conversation, and the results are written up in a short series of accompanying articles to this post. The companies represent different aspects of the sector: Red-Inc is an office supplies company; Redbox Group includes office supplies alongside design & print and office design; TRACOuk offers commercial storage, building stripout and office furniture clearance, with an emphasis on furniture and equipment reuse; and NuServe is a workspace cleaning company.
We invite you to read the Green Edge articles on three of the companies1 at the following links:
All the same, but different
We looked for similarities and differences between the companies, quite apart from the obvious variances between their types of operation. Difficult to generalise on such a small sample, of course, but we were immediately struck by the fact that a common driver was a person at the top of the organisation pushing the B Corp agenda through. At least two of the companies we talked to were explicitly founded as triple bottom line (profit, people, planet) businesses before B Corp even came along. The top-down approach is easier for smaller companies than large ones, of course, but the big firms also know that the real initiatives need CxO’s to drive them. Might we see the advent of the CBO (Chief B Corp Officer), perhaps as a conversion from the Chief Sustainability Officer, at some time in the not-too-distant future?
It would be nice to report that we found evidence of big picture-thinking and the embedding of sustainable practices in every role throughout the organisations we talked to. And to a large extent that’s true, we did. But we note that this varies with the size and type of the company: it’s much easier for a sales or ops team working out of a single office - albeit virtual, these days - than it is for an organisation with lots of operatives out in the field. One for the big boys to get their corporate heads around.
That said, we noted the following themes throughout our conversations:
One of the key binders across all four companies are their operating principles and their operating models. All are built on the circular economy and the triple bottom line. Within this, they then tackle their commercial challenges in their own ways, with an emphasis on sharing the mindset within their value chains wherever practicable.
B Corps can not operate unless they engage, partner and communicate with all stakeholders throughout their value chains and within their internal and external communities. Skills for building effective networks and teams are key and these go beyond the old ‘teamworking skills’ chestnut. Raising awareness, developing understandings and winning people over to new ways of operating combine teamworking skills with negotiation skills and make this competence just that little bit more focused.
The Green Edge has been frustrated at times over the conflation in many minds - particularly, it seems, by government - between ‘green skills’ and ‘green jobs’. In our opinion, every job has some element of green content, albeit in many jobs the green skills may be dispersed across just some of the tasks. In the B Corps we talked to, we found evidence of the emergence of more diffuse capabilities. Just as we have seen ‘digital’ become a competence that we all now have (to a degree, at least), we envisage ‘sustainability’ going the same way. Or at least some aspects of sustainability, such as a growing appreciation of the workings of the circular economy.
Being a B Corp is in many ways a differentiator right now, but will not remain so for too long if - as - more and more companies come on board. Unlike accreditations like ISO, where simply getting the stamp is enough, we can envisage competition in the B Corp ranks for thought leadership and ‘best in class’ nods as the movement grows. As one of our interviewees commented somewhat tongue-in-cheek, “B Corp is like ISO except you have to do something for it”.
A glance at the scoreboard
Just because we tend to be a bit geeky about these things, we pulled up the B Corp assessment scores for the four companies we talked to (see chart below, click to expand). It is certainly not our intention to make a point-by-point comparison, but we do make a couple of observations. First, it seemed to us to be generally easier for the two companies in B Corp’s Retail/Wholesale sector (Red-Inc and Redbox) to score relatively higher than those classed as Services with Significant Environmental Footprint (NuServe and TRACOuk). We suppose that shouldn’t be a surprise. Second, we note that special scoring (denoted in the chart with a ‘+’) exists for elements which impact business mode by being intentionally designed to create a specific positive outcome for one of its stakeholders - such as workers, community, environment, or customers. We’re making assumptions here, but Redbox’s structural charity support may correlate with its + Designed to Give score, while TRACOuk’s use of community bins (described in the post) contribute to its + Serving Underserved Populations (Direct) score.
Source: BMI, using published B Corp data
Our final point to note is that B Corp certification is by no means just about the environment. That is one of the assessment categories certainly, but alongside that goes governance, customers, workers and the community. Generally, we see it as being about being ‘businesses of our time’, firms that thinking people may want to work for and do business with. They are worthy of promotion for that.
We thank NuServe, Red-Inc, Redbox Group and TRACOuk for their time in talking to us for this article. Opinions given by The Green Edge may not coincide with opinions of these companies.
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There’s a slight delay to the article on Redbox Group and we’ll post that as soon as we get clearance from the company.