With ESG becoming increasingly important to attract and retain talent, B Corp provides a significant opportunity to engage and empower your employees with your sustainability goals.
Seismic held a breakfast briefing for our growing community on how to amplify your B Corp message across the business, led by Senior Sustainability Consultant Harry Foreman and with special guest speaker Karina O’Gorman from innocent drinks. We share highlights with you here.
B Corp is more than just a certification
B Corp isn’t just a certification, it can be used as a framework for your overall ESG strategy. The B Impact Assessment (BIA), the online assessment at the heart of B Corp, is a tool for continuous improvement and can help your organisation embed ongoing sustainable practices into your business. With this mindset, B Corp can be used as one of the pillars of your sustainability journey, rather than a stand-alone certification. In fact, about 200,000 organisations are using the BIA to measure their impact performance. Of those 200,000 businesses, only 5,000+ are certified B Corps. Here at Seismic our B Corp team of experts can help you achieve your goal of becoming B Corp Certified to transform your business for the better.
3 practical steps to amplify your B Corp message across the business
- Define your Why
Before you spread your B Corp message across your organisation, you must be able to communicate your ‘Why’ with your team. Spend some time answering the question, ‘Why B Corp?’ - Educate early
It’s as much about the journey as it is the destination. Let your team in on your B Corp journey early and identify specific stakeholders that can help you keep your employees engaged. - Empower & Embed
Build a dedicated internal network of B Corp champions. These individuals will drive the implementation of improvements, engage with their teams and share updates on the company’s B Corp progress, which is important to embedding B Corp throughout the business.
Insights from innocent drinks
innocent drinks have always stayed true to their belief that business has a greater role to play in the world than just making profits. At our Breakfast Briefing, we heard from Karina O’Gorman, European Head of Force for Good at innocent drinks, on how they are amplifying their B Corp message across the organisation.
As Head of Force for Good, Karina leads on all aspects of sustainability and nutrition work, including internal and external communications, and had a lot of tips and insights to offer. Karina is no stranger to sharing innocent’s B Corp best practices, having talked about embedding B Corp culture with Amy last December at our edie B Corp Breakfast Briefing in March.
Create internal teams to collect information and help you embed B Corp across the organisation
At innocent, they’ve created ‘B Keepers’ who come from different areas of the business. This group of between 10 and 20 employees are responsible for gathering the necessary insights for innocent to update their BIA score on an annual basis. B Keepers also act as ambassadors within the organisation and externally.
“Each B Keeper represents their area and it’s their job to understand more about their area, track their [BIA] data, as well as the areas that need improvement.”
Maintain your internal network of B Corp champions
Critical to maintaining this internal network of B Corp champions is being clear on roles, expectations and timelines. Karina shared that part of being a B Keeper at innocent is taking part in annual meetings. As a tip, she said that B Keeper meetings and agendas are set a year in advance so everyone involved knows what to expect and has ample time to prepare.
“I think it’s really important to give purpose to the role of our B Keepers. They actually need to have outcomes and deliverables of things that they can be proud of that they’re doing. Hopefully, that means that more people are aware of the B Keeper world and what they’re doing so when we do need to find new B Keepers, there are people wanting to be part of it.“
Sharing B Corp (re)certification with the team
innocent drinks recertified in January of this year, achieving 105 points, a whopping 13-point increase from their previous score. Karina highlighted the different ways her team shared the good news internally, which included the big reveal at an all-hands meeting and shouting about the incredible achievement in innocent’s monthly internal broadcast, Freshly Squeezed. They also created a video to capture some team reactions about what B Corp meant to them and why it was important. This was shared internally as well as externally to spread the message of B Corp.
“It’s amazing what setting a target [B Corp score] does to motivate everyone. Having a tangible goal or aim really helps everyone.”
Advice for those thinking about B Corp
Karina’s advice for organisations who are thinking about becoming a B Corp was simple and straightforward – take the first step by trying the BIA and getting started.
“If you’re looking at how to be a more responsible business, I think the BIA offers you a really great tool to do that and it supports your business as you grow. Get started and bring everyone on the journey from the beginning.”
“At innocent, one of the benefits [of the BIA] is it helps us grow in the right way.”
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