Becoming a 'B Corp' Agency
With years of experience as a multi-skilled digital leader, Jane Entwistle understands what it takes to consistently deliver top-notch results for their clients. She believes that purposeful creativity has ultimately been the key driver, guiding her agency on its journey toward B Corp certification.
If you missed her keynote at The Agency Growth Summit, and you are considering B Corp certification, look no further.
What is the B Corp movement?
Certified B Corporations are considered leaders in the global movement for an inclusive, equitable and regenerative economy. The not-for-profit network began in the US in 2006 with the mission to inspire and enable people to use business as a force for good and ultimately influence change in the global economy to benefit all people, communities and the planet.
Before becoming a certified B Corporation (B Corp for short), I knew that our agency had something special. We work with some truly brilliant businesses, delivering projects that both excite and inspire us. We have an amazing, close-knit team, having learnt long ago the importance of a great workplace culture and the impact that this has both on your employees and your business as a whole. We are also mindful of operating as sustainably as possible, supporting our local community with our work, and taking part in charity events throughout the year.
So when the B Corp movement started gaining momentum, and we started looking at it as something that we could possibly do as a business, I believed more in the cause and that it was the right move for us.
Becoming B Corp also allowed us to look inwards and really assess everything about us as an agency. What we were doing, how we were doing it, our team, our values, our clients, etc. We certainly don’t profess to be perfect. While the process highlighted the things we were doing well, it also allowed us to improve in areas that we weren’t even really conscious of before starting our application.
For starters, companies wishing to gain B Corp certification are verified against high standards of social and environmental performance, transparency and accountability. There are (at the time of writing) over 7,300 B Corps worldwide, with over 2,100 of these businesses in the UK.
What to consider when applying to B Corp
So, if you’ve decided that B Corp is right for you, you’ll need to apply for your certification. It is undoubtedly a rigorous process, but justly so. Overall, I’d say the application took Entyce just under a year to complete. Still, this duration can of course vary from business to business and the process will look different for each applicant.
To achieve and maintain B Corp certification, all businesses must:
Operate for profit in a competitive market for at least 12 months prior to application
Complete a B Impact Assessment and achieve a verified total score of over 80 points
Embed a commitment within your organisation to consider the impact of decisions on all stakeholders
Sign the B Corp Agreement and the Declaration of Interdependence
Publicly list your impact score on the B Lab Directory • Publish an annual impact report
Recertify every three years
However, you are certainly not alone when going through the application. Each business is assigned their own assessment analyst who is in touch at each stage of the process, and the B Corp website is packed with tools and tips to help you along.
“After all, B Corp certification certainly isn’t the end goal for Entyce. It’s not like an award that you get, and then you’re done. It signals the start of something bigger, and we are very proud to have committed ourselves to the movement and the process of continuous improvement as an agency.”
Speaking from experience, I would say that the process is comprehensive but incredibly worthwhile. Instead of considering it tedious, we saw it as an opportunity to review our processes and policies and ensure that they were still relevant and aligned with our company values and mission statement. It was refreshing to take a step back and view Entyce as a whole against the high standards of B Corp verification.
So, for any agency owners reading this and thinking about starting your application, here are my top recommendations:
Work through the B Impact Assessment framework ahead of time and divide the application into workable sections.
Appoint one person in your organisation to be a ‘B Corp Champion’, take the lead on the assessment, and engage the rest of your team.
Find your ‘quick wins’ and highlight the parts of the application you can do easily.
Ensure you adopt the B Corp legal requirement to earn 7.5-10 points on the assessment.
Engage your team. We completed a workshop at Entyce to work through our mission statement and company values as a team.
Use the online resource hub for best practices for implementing improvements to your business.
Speak to other B Corps to find out more about their experiences
Set yourself goals for improvements ahead of your annual impact report and recertification
What are the benefits to agencies?
So, aside from the obvious environmental and societal benefits of being a part of the movement, research conducted by B Lab* has proven that B Corps routinely outperform other businesses across several business metrics. B Corp SMEs have, on average:
Faster growth in both annual turnover and employee headcount,
Greater levels of employee retention, engagement and diversity
More robust governance processes
Greater focus on civic and community engagement
Higher levels of innovation
Greater likelihood of success at securing external finance
Higher expectations about future growth
“When you become B Corp certified, you
are invited into a community. You can
join a ‘B Local’ and the online ‘B Hive’ and receive instant access to other like-minded organisations, which can be incredibly valuable from a business perspective.”
Becoming B Corp was also something that our team felt very strongly about. In the current climate, everyone wants to work for a business that cares about more than just profits. And it’s a similar case for our clients. As soon as we mention our B Corp certification, we’re met with intrigue and excitement. People want to know more. Businesses want to know that their suppliers operate sustainably and treat their employees well. And as the conversation around ethics grows, the validation that we get from being B Corp certified brings weight to everything that we’re trying to achieve as an agency.
I believe that our policies and how we operate will become just as important to our clients as the quality of our work, and therefore, becoming B Corp is a vital part of ‘future-proofing’ our agency for the years to come.
* Data from a B Lab UK November 2021 survey - https:/bcorporation. uk/b-corp-certification/why-certify-as-a-b-corp/
