18 minute read
The good fight
THE GOOD
FIGHT
A new balance is required. The narrative that an organisation is all about the bottom line needs to be balanced by the growing pursuit of ‘profi t with purpose’. Investors, consumers and employees want ethical, social and environmental value to drive organisations. But how can this new approach be introduced and maintained? B Corp accreditation is an increasingly popular option, as Bradford Keen reports
Pursuing an ethical advantage
Search the B Corp directory for certified UKbased companies operating within ‘facilities, ground and maintenance’ and you will find just two results – at least at the time of writing. One is NuServe, a contract cleaner of corporate offices; the other is the property management consultancy MAPP. However, an increasing number of service suppliers are becoming aware of the B Corp concept as they look to appeal to future clients.
So what exactly is B Corp? Set up in 2006, it’s an accreditation process designed to allow organisations to protect and improve their positive impact over time. Businesses seeking to become B Corpcertified complete a year-long accreditation process, demonstrating commitment to socially and environmentally sustainable business – while revealing in practical terms, through company policies and stakeholder engagement, how this commitment will be achieved.
A baseline ‘impact score’ for accreditation is 80 out 200 points. Organisations gain these points by providing evidence of socially and environmentally responsible practices relating to: ● energy supplies; ● waste and water use; ● worker compensation; ● diversity, and ● corporate transparency.
Once accreditation is obtained, organisations need to recertify every two to three years to improve their ‘impact score’. This short window between certifications boosts the B Corp idea from a standard tick-box process into a continuing internal conversation about organisational change. This, in the 2020s, is an approach that organisations are increasingly happy to integrate into their day-to-day activities.
So far, more than 4,100 certified B Corps are operating across 150 industries in nearly 80 countries. Big brands include The Guardian, Patagonia, Ben & Jerry’s, The Body Shop, Brewdog and Ella’s Kitchen. No particular sector or size of organisation stands out. But what turns the dial is the involvement of a particularly evangelistic owner or board. And there comes a point when such evangelists end up driving this change beyond their own organisations to necessitate it in those of their competitors.
Adapting to fi t
Simon Duke, who runs the cleaning contractor NuServe, says of his firm’s B Corp commitment that “the certification procedure is extremely robust. The height of the bar is, however, what attracted me to the organisation. It forced us
B Corp accreditation requires companies to commit to staff wellbeing and support
to improve areas where we were weak, and to take note of areas where we needed to improve record-keeping or governance”.
For example, NuSurve adopted nonchemical cleaning agents before becoming a B Corp, but during accreditation the company had to provide data to demonstrate the percentage of its spend on ‘environmentally preferred’ cleaning agents, identify and record the various eco-certifications of each product, and run reports to quantify its spending on compliant and non-compliant products. (Read more about NuServe’s B Corp journey at: tinyurl.com/Fac1222Nuserve)
“This highlighted that we had some work to do and prompted further product trials to identify alternative products to some key materials within our range,” Duke explains. “The roll-out required us to update all COSHH folders, and to train our teams on the new product.”
Duke stresses that B Corp doesn’t demand perfection but rather an earnest commitment to continuous improvement. “Legally, we were required to amend our articles of association, making our directors legally obligated to consider the needs of all stakeholders equally, including our employees, our clients, the environment, and our community.”
Flexible workspace provider x+why also faced challenges with policies and processes. “We were forced to really think about things like our people, policies and programmes,” explains CEO and
3,500
Number of B Corp-certified organisations
70
Number of countries in which B Corp-certified organisations operate
150
Number of industries in which B Corp-certified organisations operate
co-founder Rupert Dean. “This was a time-consuming effort, but ultimately incredibly useful with long-term benefits to the business.”
Corp values
‘Using business as a force for good’ is a B Corp tagline. And it’s in this broader message that the magnitude of necessary change becomes clear. A B Corpaccredited organisation, for example, must embed the scheme’s principles into its constitution. With social value legislation and the structural change demanded by net zero targets, there seems to be a growing clamour to be seen as actively embracing the ethical business practices that B Corp demands.
“Certification itself hasn’t really changed how we work with our members,” says x+why’s Rupert Dean. “It does, however, demonstrate to new prospects our commitment to our mission, and gives reassurance that we live up to all the things we promise in the sales brochure.”
The B Corp accreditation process “placed MAPP’s entire business operations under close scrutiny”, Jono Gill, chief of staff at MAPP, explains. “Amongst the measures that have been made as part of the certification process has been the total abolition of zero-hours contracts, increased diversity and inclusion, financial coaching for our people, market-leading maternity policies and an opportunity to lease electric or hybrid cars.”
These are significant and contemporary innovations. Given their likely appeal to prospective employers of their clients, there is a growing interest in B Corp accreditation from other property management organisations.
“Across the sector, we can sense a growing demand from occupiers and investors for the spaces that they occupy to be accredited – and B Corp is an ideal vehicle to achieve this alongside other accreditations,” says Gill.
Dean says x+why has also noticed growing awareness among its client base.
“Businesses are more aware of the benefits of the triple bottom line for their customers and also their staff and partners. It’s just not going to be possible for businesses to survive without actively addressing their social and environmental impact.”
Despite this client interest, there is still concern about whether complying with B Corp will push up costs. Duke says there “is an understandable, but often incorrect, view that sustainability automatically carries a price premium”. In fact, he reports, the company’s pricing has been unaffected by B Corp certification.
Nevertheless, to address the cost concern Duke says there is a need to reframe the narrative so that “ethics and
Simon Duke, managing director of NuServe
cost aren’t at opposite ends of a spectrum”. Rather, the requirement, he says, is to “create ethical solutions that represent excellent value for money”. However, achieving this requires compromise from contracting parties – and from them a similar willingness to innovate.
B Corp certification in a facilities supply partner is attractive to organisations looking for a partner to support their own corporate social responsibility (CSR) or environmental, social and governance (ESG) objectives. Duke says: “The fact that we’re already carbon-neutral with an active diversity and inclusion and social impact agenda appeals to prospective clients. This has helped us to gain business and to open discussions with new prospects.”
Yet this has always been the perceived value of independently produced standards created by the International Standards Organization (ISO) and British Standards Institute’s (BSI). Moreover, many BSI standards for workplace and FM performance have been introduced over the course of the past 10 years and more.
Stan Mitchell, CEO of Key Facilities Management International, is an FM standards pioneer. He is the current chair of the BSI’s FM Standards Committee and founding chair of ISO’s Technical Committee 267 Facilities Management.
“Standards are good – as a bold statement – because irrespective of where they emanate from, they give us a benchmark to look at how we do what we do,” says Mitchell. His differentiation between the likes of B Corps and BSI? That the former is about telling the world “who you are and what your ethics are” while the latter “provides a tangible benchmark against which you can measure yourselves” for a particular activity.
Whereas some organisations may consider ISO standards such as ISO 41001 – Facilities Management as primarily “a piece of paper for marketing purposes”, the real motivator, says Mitchell, is that “you will be better at the end of the process than when you started, and I don’t care who you are – that is almost guaranteed”.
What’s more, Mitchell “would like to think that good FM companies have been focusing on adding environmental and social value for decades”.
Nevertheless, accreditation to a standard is about demonstrating compliance, which requires measurement – and metrics aren’t often uniform internationally, or even cross-sector.
For a standard to be effective, Mitchell explains, they need to be defined and measured “in a manner that can be understood by all”. What this means is that “when you try to create those measurements, you have to come down to the lowest common denominator that can be applicable”.
The result can be a standard seen
B Corp versus existing standards
It’s worth considering that B Corps is one of several proprietary certification schemes introduced over the course of recent years. B Corps targets certification of an organisation’s wider ethical performance, whereas others such as WELL and FitWel focus on the impact of an organisation’s physical estate upon those who use it. There is a common aim: development of a model for an organisation that affords them a point of difference from their competitors.
B CORP PROSPECTS
WHICH ORGANISATIONS CAN BECOME A B CORP?
Any for-profit company with at least a year of operations can pursue B Corp certification.
“Sometimes implementing a lot of the governance structures can feel unnatural and clunky for SMEs and they will struggle with resources to make it happen,” explains Jessica Ferrow of Twelve, an agency that guides businesses along the B Corp certification journey. “Larger businesses might have more of the systems in place like codes of conduct and supplier-screening programmes. But it will always take longer to make big changes where more people are involved, and they may face red tape or resistance from their board. Every business is different and it’s really about doing it at a time that’s right for your business.”
Chocolate-maker Montezuma’s is currently on the road to becoming a B Corp
as overly generic, as has been the criticism of ISO 41001.
A decision that many organisations will grapple with now and in the future is the sheer number of proprietary standards popping up in the marketplace. Rather than focusing on what “next month’s sexy standard is going to be”, Mitchell would rather see the standards world – along with businesses and industries – collaborate and find consensus on one source of truth.
Why not take the energy poured into creating new proprietary standards into an existing infrastructure and credibility such as ISO? asks Mitchell. The standard isn’t perfect, he adds. Indeed, “it’s incredibly bureaucratic, for good reason, which is very frustrating if you’re working in it. But it’s credible and transparent in terms of its process”.
The client perspective
Organisations that have committed to the B Corp pathway are certainly many and varied. Grimsby Town Football Club is working towards the accreditation, its owners seeking to bring the ethical practices adopted in their own firms into making the Mariners the first B Corp organisation in world professional sport.
The renowned private bank Coutts & Co has also become B Corp-certified, one of three banks to have done so. Financial institutions can see an opportunity to stand out, and with Coutts & Co, the firm’s reasoning is instructive: it sees itself as an active part of the community of B Corp-certified organisations, improving its own operations while being part of something ‘bigger’ that strives to improve the wider world of business. The overall ethical dimension to B Corp is appealing to organisations in new ways; it’s seen as conferring a form of competitive advantage while simultaneously grounding the firm to strong operational principles.
Chocolate-maker Montezuma’s is also on the road to B Corp accreditation. While Fairtrade has been an important standard governing cocoa sourcing and treatment of the supply chain for years, the challenge for Montezuma’s is that it cannot procure all of its required cocoa from Fairtrade sources alone.
Accordingly, B Corp is seen as helping it overcome this challenge while broadening the ethical focus of the business. “This isn’t just about cocoa sourcing. This is about how we treat our people, our suppliers, and our customers,” explains Bruce Alexander, Montezuma’s managing director.
Rupert Dean, CEO and co-founder of x and why
Challenges encountered
Montezuma’s – a medium-sized company – has not had the resources to appoint an environmental or sustainability specialist to assist with B Corp certification, meaning that a major struggle has been juggling the requirements with everyone else’s day job.
Of the five governance focus points B Corp accreditation covers (employees,
SIMON DUKE, managing director at NuServe
RUPERT DEAN, cofounder and CEO of flexible workspace provider x and why
JONO GILL is chief of staff at Mapp
STAN MITCHELL, CEO of Key Facilities Management International
BRUCE ALEXANDER, CEO of Montezuma’s
JESSICA FERROW, cofounder of Twelve
MEHALAH BECKETT, founder of Lead Powerful Impact customers, suppliers, community and the environment), the biggest gap for Montezuma’s is environmental. As organisations are pursuing net zero goals up and down their supply chains, B Corp is seen as a powerful tool.
“There are questions like: ‘What’s your carbon footprint?’,” explains Alexander. “That’s a very simplistic question – but if you don’t know it, to start the process is massive. It’s relatively simple to do your scope 1 and 2 emissions because you wholly own those. But when you get to scope 3 – emissions of your whole supply chain – it becomes an absolute minefield”. (See Front Desk p.8 & 9, ‘Scope for improvement’).
“Different suppliers have different calculation methodologies, so that one question can lead to a whole workstream you just didn’t know existed.”
Integrity is the driving force
Nevertheless, “what’s really good about it is that it forces you to understand what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. What is it they say? ‘Integrity is all about what you do when no one else is looking.’”
The B Corp process has meant holding important conversations with suppliers, asking every supply chain partner to detail their own sustainability agendas and carbon-reduction plans. This yields a variety of answers, with some having gained ground on the journey and others having yet to begin. What can result is a positive tension to established relationships.
“There is very much an implicit message,” says Alexander. “‘If you don’t start on this journey, we’re going to have to seriously consider whether or not we continue to partner with you.’”
From a facilities perspective, all of this can mean a fresh take on existing building maintenance from an environmental perspective to improve a B Corp impact score.
Alexander says that one of the biggest challenges from his firm’s facilities perspective is its factory. “I’m operating out of quite an old building and at some point I’m going to have to replace walls, roofs and so on. Insulation is poor at the moment; how I replace those is a big consideration.”
The view from the consultants
As with other proprietary certification schemes, consultancies have sprung up to advise organisations on the B Corp certification process. The visibility of the scheme appears to be developing at pace. So popular has it become that businesses are having to wait up to 10 months for their applications to be assessed and verified.
“The 200-plus question survey can be quite overwhelming for businesses at first,” says Jessica Ferrow, co-founder of environmental consultancy Twelve.
“It’s not for the faint-hearted; making the necessary improvements and gathering the evidence needed to certify can be very time-consuming.”
The average score for a non-B Corp business is 50 points, 30 shy of the minimum score for certification.
“Most businesses will find it a challenge to find those extra points,” Ferrow explains. “It’s hard to get a high score unless you are actually doing something exceptional – like operating as a circular business, giving regular and significant amounts of money to charity or are fully employee-owned.”
Mehalah Beckett, executive coach and founder of the consultancy Lead Powerful Impact, says businesses can become disillusioned if answering ‘no’ to lots of questions.
“When I work with someone to support them, we get very clear on their mission and vision and how they want to be a better company for the world. Focus on just those things. You don’t need all of the points, you just need 80.”
The intended commercial benefit of B Corp certification is that it makes an organisation more appealing to investors who are increasingly seeking to prioritise the funding of businesses that demonstrate social responsibility.
“Nobody wants to invest in a company with skeletons in the closet,” Beckett explains.
“I’ve had a number of pre-startups come to me saying, ‘We want to set up as a B Corp from the beginning because
PRACTICAL APPLICATION
FM’S ROLE IN SUPPORT OF B CORP PREPARATION
● Gather data vital on energy, water and waste for the workers and environment section; ● Provide insight into reduction targets and strategies to achieve them; ● Strategise on delivering a circular economy; ● Oversee certain procurements; ● Offer training provision, health and safety, wellbeing and benchmarking; and ● Create gender-neutral bathrooms and facilities for breastf eeding mothers.
we want to attract long, patient capital. We want to tell them we’re a pending B Corp and we’re going to make all these decisions in line with B Corp.’”
There is, perhaps, another equally compelling case. Employees and prospective employees, increasingly fixated on working for organisations that demonstrate environmental and social purpose, will see B Corp status as a big tick. Attracting and retaining talent is becoming a key driver of interest in certification.
Also, with its focus on five core business areas, Beckett says B Corps aims for a much broader definition of sustainability than simply safeguarding the environment.
“You’re not just buying a certificate as you might do with an ISO or something like that, or maybe a Fairtrade if you’re looking at social responsibility; it’s a huge movement.”
From an FM perspective, a familiar requirement will resonate. Accreditation to B Corps is easier, we are told, for companies with accurate data and thus, perhaps, those smaller organisations with fewer ‘moving parts’. Companies with necessarily complex supply chains may struggle.
Mehalah Beckett , founder of Lead Powerful Impact
“Data is king at every level,” Beckett mantains. “A company must either have decent data or be willing to invest in capturing data to prove their positive impact.” Beckett says companies should start talking about their B Corp intentions at the beginning of the process. They will soon enjoy the benefits. “It’s a mindset change.”
The long game
The real issue with B Corp is whether it will, in time, be seen as simply the latest in a slew of proprietary certification models that benefits from, rather than defines, the times in which we live. B Corp has in fact existed for more than a decade, so it could be argued that current high levels of take-up, while loudly trumpeted, belie a model that a majority of businesses can afford to ignore. Indeed, government legislation throughout the world is already driving greater adherence to the kind of reporting to which B Corp commits its certified organisations. What it hopes to do is create, through its routine recertification approach with its built-in incentive to continually improve, a sense within organisationsthat they are at the cutting-edge of ethical business practice – helping customers cut through the ‘green wash’ and commitments to such things as social value, proving their ongoing commitment. Time will tell whether this overt commitment to reinforcing ethical values requires such certification schemes. For those providing such organisations’ workplaces and facilities, B Corp certification promises interesting times in the years ahead.
MORE ONLINE Read about NuServe’s commitment to B Corp bit.ly/1222_NuServe_ Read about MAPP’s commitment to B Corp bit.ly/1222_MAPP_
