Today we reached an important milestone as an organisation. A culmination of several months of hard work by our amazing team to design and build a purpose driven organisation with an aim to benefit all our stakeholders, not just shareholders.
Our milestone was our submission to become B Corporation Certified. This is something that personally I am immensely proud of, and passionate about.
For the uninitiated:
A Certified B Corporation is an organisation that makes decisions that make a positive impact across all their stakeholders: workers, customers, suppliers, community, and the environment.
To be clear, we’re not becoming a not for profit, rather profit isn’t our only consideration. We believe we can be profitable, at the same time balancing this with doing no harm and benefiting all our stakeholders. Acting in the interest of all of our stakeholders isn’t new for us, it’s always been in our DNA, but it formalises the approach in which we have always wished to operate. It is a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) framework to which we’re committed to aligning with.
To gain B Corporation certification involves a rigorous audit process after an in-depth analysis and transformation of the way we operate as an organisation. To give some insight, we’ve so far conducted an in-depth business impact analysis which has encompassed our approach to:
Governance and our policies and practices pertaining our mission, ethics, accountability and transparency;
Employees and their financial, physical, professional, and social well-being;
Community and what we can do to contribute to the economic and social well-being of the community in which we operate
Environment and what we’re doing and can do to improve our environmental stewardship;
Clients and what we can do to improve the value we create for our direct clients and their consumers
Sounds like a lot of ground to cover? Absolutely. We’ve considered and covered 183 different questions/areas across our entire value chain and adjusted and improved the way we operate from our company charter to our catering suppliers.
I look forward to keeping everyone posted on our progress with the audit and certification process. From what I understand it is quite involved. I’ve always believed feedback is a gift, so I look forward to working with the auditors and our team and improving and adjusting how we do things on their expert advice. And, if you want to know more about B Corporation, what it means and the benefits of certification please let me know and I am happy to share our journey to date.
In the meantime, we’ll continue working hard to help our clients create new value, and to keep looking after our great people as a priority. We’ve been fortunate that the amazing capability of our people, and the high regard our clients hold them in, has seen us remain engaged to deliver a number of COVID-19 Programs which have delivered superb responses to these extraordinary circumstances. Opportunity we are tremendously proud and grateful for.
Stay safe everyone.
Nick