The Business Use Case of the B Impact Assessment

You’ve looked into B Corp certification and made a decision: it isn’t for us. Whether it’s a bridge too far, or you don’t believe in paying for certifications, or your shareholders won’t approve the required legal changes, there are plenty of reasons that companies decide not to certify. Some corporate structures, like franchises, and industries, like cannabis, are simply ineligible to certify.  

And while we’re always happy to help you cross that bridge, help you find the ROI in the fees, or talk your shareholders through the scariness of of becoming a public benefit corporation, we also understand and respect this decision when we encounter it. 

But whether it’s a strategic decision or certification isn’t a possibility, it doesn’t mean that going through the process is a waste of time. Completing the B Impact Assessment is an invaluable process that allows you to reflect on your business, identify weaknesses and opportunities, and use the collected data to tell better impact stories to potential clients and employees. 

A long, hard look in the mirror

Nearly every executive team we work with enters their work with us incredibly confident about the good their business is doing in the world. They are incredibly transparent, take great care of their employees, have a volunteer program, recycle their cardboard, etc. But as we go through the sections of the B Impact Assessment, a different picture emerges and questions begin to arise: 

• We aren’t actually that transparent–and that disconnect with your employees is a lack of trust you aren’t acknowledging. 
• You paid a living wage…15 years ago. And your benefits are average at best. 
• Yes, you have a volunteer program. But you can’t tell us how many employees volunteered, what organizations you supported, or how many hours you gave back to the community last year. 
• That recycle bin in the break room was a great first step in 1997. But your corporate travel, your inbound and outbound shipments, and your office space have an incredible environmental footprint you aren’t thinking about. 

This doesn’t make you a bad business owner. You’re running a business. But it’s incredibly powerful to take a step back and take an unbiased look at your organization. Is it, and are you, living up to the values it was founded on? 

Weaknesses become opportunities

Once you’ve identified your weaknesses, it’s easy to turn them into opportunities. Working internally with your employees and externally with your customers, determine which of these areas of opportunity are most important. And then start tackling them. 

Having a plan of attack for these opportunities should include: 

• Identifying what is most important and weighing it against what is realistic in the short and long term. Paying a living wage will be more important to your team than giving them an extra day off to volunteer. But the latter might be easier to do today, while the former will require some work with your CFO to roll out and implement. 
• Have a plan. Like Simon Senek burned into our brains, start with why and reverse engineer from there. Why are we doing this? What is the outcome we’re looking to drive? How will we implement it? How will we track its success and efficacy? Who is going to own it? 
• Plan for storytelling. These changes will benefit your business. They are probably long overdue. But they will have costs attached to them. So make sure your HR and Marketing teams are involved in this process. 

This brings us to our last point…

Use all of your new data to tell better stories

I’ve written, spoken, and mumbled in my sleep about generic impact storytelling and most companies’ boring “About Us” and “Our Culture” pages. There’s so much greenwashing and wokewashing out there that most employees and customers are probably eye-rolling your fluffy and hollow impact stuff. 

Going through the B Impact Assessment and answering all of the questions forces you to collect data that you probably weren’t tracking before. And being able to put real numbers, data, outputs, and outcomes into your storytelling boosts your credibility. As you navigate the assessment and your plan of attack, keep your storytelling, blogs, and brand front of mind.

• Remember your why. We talked about this earlier. Is this improvement or a new company goal designed to boost retention? Is it to recruit top talent? Is it to increase your customer NPS? Your storytelling around this impact piece should be similarly focused. 
• Don’t tell me, show me. Not to beat an old rug here, but everyone nowadays has some sort of a claim to be a good corporate citizen, to give back, to be green, to be “one of the best places to work.” How are you doing it? What % increase did you see? What % of revenue was that? 
• Start tracking outcomes. This one takes time, but it is prevalent throughout the B Impact Assessment. Don’t just quantify what you did, tell me what change it made. Creature Comforts Brewery does a great job of this. They not only track metrics like volunteer hours, books read, and children impacted, but they also track how those numbers drove those students’ literacy rates. Outputs are powerful storytellers. 

It isn’t about the certification–it’s about a better world

The B Corp certification gave companies a way to measure and certify their impact. But it was also the beginning of a movement to reimagine capitalism, rewrite the narrative of business as usual, and start using our companies as a force for good in the world. In a way, it was never about the certification. 

I hope this blog encourages you to use the assessment as your own measuring stick to examine what you could be doing better, put a plan in place to improve, and use these improvements to be a better business–to your stakeholders and your shareholders. 

And if you want an expert in this process, whether you want to certify or not, please reach out. We’re always happy to have these conversations and help every company that wants to do better be better. 

We love to have these conversations. If you want to talk, ask Nathan. He’s always more than happy to jump on a call and make a new friend.