In the UK, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) account for 99.8% of the business population, account for three-fifths of the employment and around half of turnover in the UK private sector. In addition to these social and financial impacts, on average each UK SME emits 15 tonnes of CO₂ annually (1–6 tonnes per employee).
At Calvium, we take our impact responsibilities seriously. In addition to being committed to Net Zero as a business and our membership of SME Climate Hub, we are now thrilled to be a certified B Corp. This acknowledges our sustainability actions and efforts, and includes us in a global community of businesses working for positive change.
What is a B Corp?
B Corp certification is awarded to companies that meet high standards of social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency. B Corps are also legally committed to bringing benefit not just to shareholders, but all business stakeholders — workers, customers, communities, and the environment. The B stands for Benefit for all.
Having B Corp certification is evidence of our business values and practices, and also connects us to other suppliers and clients who share our priorities.
“Hugely proud that Calvium is now a certified B Corp! Great to see the hard work and considered actions of the team result in this accreditation, demonstrating our high standards in social and environmental impact.”
CEO Jo Reid
Why B Corp?
Our vision at Calvium is to deliver innovations for meaningful user, societal, environmental and business impacts, and B Corp certification demonstrates progress towards this vision. It also gives our project partners and clients evidence of our social value and sustainability activities, which are increasingly important to public sector partnerships and leading business practice.
The ethical business ecosystem is blooming, and there are more and more accredited B Corporations keen to work with each other to further embed ethical and sustainable practices into the core of the business community. We are pleased to be contributing our skills to progress this positive movement.
What is required for B Corp certification?
B Corp Certification is a designation that a business is meeting high standards of verified performance, accountability, and transparency on factors from employee benefits and charitable giving to supply chain practices and materials processing. In order to achieve certification, a company must:
- Demonstrate high social and environmental performance by achieving a B Impact Assessment score of 80 or above and pass a risk review.
- Make a legal commitment by changing corporate governance structure to be accountable to all stakeholders, not just shareholders, and achieve benefit corporation status if available in their jurisdiction.
- Exhibit transparency by allowing information about their performance, measured against B Lab’s standards, to be publicly available on their B Corp profile on B Lab’s website.
Key points from the application process
For those looking into gaining accreditation, the assessment process steps through five criteria, and scores activities against areas of Governance, Workers, Community, Environment, and Customers.
Our company culture and organisational structure not only satisfied a number of assessment criteria up front, but has also recently made us a finalist for three awards – Best Agency to Work For at the Company Culture, British Data and SPARKies awards!
From the outside, the B Corp application can look intimidating, but once underway, the process is clear and support is available. In our experience, the B Corp team has been very helpful and friendly throughout.
Gathering evidence for the submission is essential, and our existing good internal business processes, including from ISO 27001 certification, gave us a head start. Positive intentions are also required – B Corp isn’t a mark of perfection but of continuous improvement. Every category in the application requires evidence proving applicants are actively making the changes they claim, and plans for future changes.
Three main tips we would share with businesses thinking about applying for B Corp certification:
- Be clear on the ethical purposes and practices at the heart of your business, and have an appetite to always improve.
- Every stage of application requires evidence – document everything!
- Whatever the processes and assets within a company (e.g. people, suppliers, assets) consider them from different angles to look for opportunities for improvements.
There were some aspects of the application that we hadn’t needed to consider before – and it was helpful to give some time to discuss and respond to them.
One was around balancing wages and employment responsibilities based on the country of employee residence. The aim of this criteria is to promote fair wages for international employees, rather than outsourcing work to reduce payroll burdens and employment responsibilities. Although our international colleagues are already all fairly paid and highly skilled, these international balancing calculations still took us a little while to equate, as we currently work with contractors and employees in the USA, Spain and Portugal, as well as the UK.
Challenges and continuous improvement
Over the past few years we have transitioned from an office-based company to a wholly remote working company, which has made measurement baselines tricky to set. The prime challenge didn’t lay in radically changing our practices – the challenge was in formalising the impact of our daily processes and activities.
Working in the innovation space, we are familiar with working with change and flux, and even in areas where we scored highly, we continue to think about how we can make improvements.
Our best score was for working with customers – judged as excellent in process and policies. We also scored highly in the section on Governance. Having ISO 27001 and ISO 9001 certification, we were already a good way there, but quality criteria also apply to suppliers and our people, as well as our processes.
“It’s taken time and care to measure our work against the multiple B Corp criteria – to define appropriate baselines, record improvements, and then collate the evidence. Achieving their exacting standards is both satisfying and energising! It’s been a really useful process to explore broader impacts of our business activities, and to demonstrate how we are delivering on our core business values.”
COO Roisin Alvy
Going for B Corp certification has served as an excellent process to review our practices, sharpen where necessary, and collect evidence. This means we now have a fully informed base level on which to make plans for further improvements.
Next steps
B Corp Certification isn’t the final step to being a ‘good’ business: it’s just the beginning of a journey. To maintain certification, B Corps are re-assessed by B Lab’s standards every three years — standards that themselves are evolving and improving. Within that time, Calvium’s culture of continuous improvement means we are already looking at how to improve our practices further to improve our impact – and for a higher score in three years time!
For example, we will be looking to increase training inside the company, focus on greater local impact, connecting with sustainable suppliers, reducing our carbon footprint, increasing our volunteering, and contributing to local communities and social initiatives.
As well as providing us with a widely acknowledged accreditation, the certification process has also helped us reflect on our business direction and supported us to plan detailed steps towards our sustainability goals.
B Corp certification isn’t a judgement on being perfect, it’s more a marker of positive intent, considered actions and demonstrable progress.
We are committed to continual improvement and making positive change for people and the planet. It is fantastic to have this officially recognised with B Corp certification, and we look forward to making further impact with partners who share these goals.
[calviumPullout]Contact Calvium to connect with a B Corp certified digital partner.[/calviumPullout]