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9. Working towards certification
9. Workin towards certification
As far as we are concerned, certification is not a goal in itself. Even without certification, B Corp offers an excellent set of insights, examples and benchmarks to work systematically on a sustainable business model. If you want to work towards certification, consider the following steps.
The art of making a start!
In the assessment, you will be asked to answer numerous questions and be able to produce documents to support your answers. You will also be asked to provide various facts and figures such as turnover, profit and number of employees. In practice, we have noticed that recording the insights, facts and figures as part of the day-to-day work leads to the lowest “administrative burden”. So don't hesitate and create an account right now at https://bimpactassessment.net/.
Start with a B Corp search through your company To understand how an organisation realises social value, the person responsible for HR policy is an important point of contact. When it comes to mission and vision, management is the first point of contact. A relevant question each time is: whom do I talk to about this building block in order to complete my B Corp quest? The table below provides a guideline for bringing the right people to the table. In larger organisations, this will undoubtedly include several people. In smaller companies, one person will be responsible for multiple areas.
Subject Areas of responsibility
Mission, vision, strategy, governance
Ethics, transparency, human resources, employee induction, working conditions, employee engagement, diversity
Facts, figures and finance
Impact in the chain
Board and management
Staff and organisation
Finance and control
Procurement
Environmental management and societal impact Corporate Social Responsibility
Interplay with the customer
Sales
Experience shows that getting started is the trick. Starting with a search for the solutions already present in your organisation, as well as good habits that are in place. We have positive experiences with the following route.
Raise-awareness meeting Organise a raise-awareness meeting for the management to find out what vision conscious entrepreneurship is based on.
Appoint an initiator Appoint an initiator who starts with an initial inventory. This workbook can be used as an excellent starting point.
Start using the B Corp impact assessment Complete the assessment by entering the insights into the B Corp Assessment tool that can be found on the B Corp website: https://B Corporation.net
Work action-oriented The next step is to form a B Corp team of people from different disciplines. It's nice to go through the online questionnaire together and to optimise it as part of the work. The questionnaire is designed in such a way that it keeps track of the “point score” and offers the option to set up and monitor actions.
Start working with B Corp: writing things down is not enough! Once you start working with the B Corp standard, some of the principles behind B Corp become clear, such as “writing things down is not enough”. For example, you’re awarded zero points for describing the social and ecological impact of the company. The number of points increases as soon as you literally show action and, for example, clearly demonstrate the commitment to realise social, ecological and/or societal value by means of the mission and vision.
Getting certified? If you iteratively go through the steps as described above, at some stage the self-assessment will show you that you have passed the 80-point mark. This is the moment to decide whether you want to be certified or not. Based on interviews with the participants in the various learning-working-doing projects, we see the following advantages and disadvantages.
Advantages Disadvantages
B Corp offers clear tools for systematic improvement The obligation to record things in writing, which is perceived as an administrative burden
Opportunity to benchmark with organisations from different sectors Obtaining the certificate requires a considerable time investment
There is one language for working on conscious entrepreneurship within the organisation There are already (too) many certificates
Continue improving
As it should be with any certification, the certificate is not the end but the beginning of a process of continuous improvement, so conduct periodic follow-up measurements to ensure progress and initiate new actions. Do not fall into the trap of “classic monitoring”, i.e., focusing exclusively on facts and figures. Preferably work according to the principles of reflexive monitoring. More background on the method of reflexive monitoring can be found at: https://drift.eur.nl/
