Business

B Corp guide for small business: how to start the B Corp journey from day one

Zen Jun 28 2022

Are you a start-up or small business? Interested in B Corp certification? Just want to know more? Here’s everything you need to get started.

Are you a small business or a start-up?

We all want to do our best to look after each other and the planet, and being B Corp certified is a way to hold your organisation accountable and promote healthy, sustainable growth.

B Corps are businesses that are evaluated highly on their efforts towards people, sustainability and the environment. Big names in the B Corp world include Ben and Jerry’s, Patagonia and Allbirds. But it’s not just the big brands that can get involved.

Interest in B Corp status is growing rapidly, as corporate sustainability becomes a top priority around the world. If you run a small and relatively new business, you might not be able to apply for B Corp certification just yet. However, you can apply for something called Pending B Corp status, which will set you on the right path.

Read on to find out how small businesses can become B Corps…

What is a B Corp? The B is for Benefit

B Corp is short for B Corporation, a certification that companies of all shapes and sizes can apply for. It is based on an evaluation of an organisation’s social, sustainability and environmental performance, building a case for responsible business. And if you’re interested in earning the certification, you might like to know that the questions in the assessment cover a wide range of criteria:

Governance: These questions will look at your company’s overall mission. For example, how you engage around social or environmental impact and its ethics. Questions in this section also look at the ability of businesses to protect their mission going forward.

Community: This area looks at the ways in which your company both engages with and impacts its local community, including those communities from which it hires, sources and operates within. Think diversity and inclusion, civic engagement and charitable giving and you’re on the right track.

Workers: Do you look after your employees and their wellbeing? Do they have financial security? Healthcare? Are there opportunities for career development? This section is all about your people.

Environment: These questions will focus on your company’s environmental management practices, such as the impact on air, water, climate and biodiversity. This can also include the direct impact of your company’s operations, in addition to any supply chains and distribution channels.

Customers: You’ve been asked about your staff, but how about your customers? What is the quality of your products and services, your data privacy regulations and your feedback channels?

As of 2022, there are now 4,500 businesses that have certified as B Corps worldwide, big and small. B Corp certification is possible and encouraged in every sector, from fashion to food and everywhere in between.

How does a small business get started?

B Lab (the not-for-profit responsible for the B Corp movement) encourages businesses of all shapes and sizes to aim for B Corp certification. However, if you are a small business or a start-up you might not be ready to go for the full B Impact Assessment just yet.

The clever people at B Lab have considered this and created something called ‘Pending B Corp status’, which is designed to help you on your way to full B Corp certification.

Pending B Corp status is finite. It’s not the same as becoming B Corp certified. After being operational for a certain period of time, your company will eventually need to go through the full verification process. So how do you become a pending B Corp?

1) Meet the legal requirements for B Corp certification. This legal accountability means you need to incorporate stakeholder governance into the legal structure of your start-up (or small business), and that includes having it in your official documentation. This will mean that your company is legally accountable to your people, and that includes everyone from your workers and customers to the planet!

2) Fill in and submit a prospective B Impact Assessment. When you complete the assessment, you will learn all about the B Corp standards and learn what procedures need to be put in place as your company begins to expand. Don’t worry, it won’t be verified by B Lab at this point, and you won’t receive a verified score while you are still in Pending status.

3) Sign the Pending B Corp agreement and pay a one-time fee. B Lab will provide you with official documentation that includes a contractual agreement with more details about Pending B Corp status. The amount of the one-time fee will be dependent on your region.

What benefits are there for a small business to be a B Corp?

There are many advantages to becoming a B Corp that will continue to benefit your organisation way into the future.

Attract the right kind of employees: More than ever, people want to work for companies that they believe share their own values and ideals. By becoming a B Corp, potential employees will know that you are actively trying to pursue social change. This will make them more likely to want to work with you, and importantly, want to stay with you and help the company progress.

Encourage social responsibility: Once you’ve achieved B Corp status, you are held accountable for your social and environmental responsibility. Consumers are known to want to support companies that care about the impact they have on the world around them.

Build a network of like-minded partners: Becoming a B Corp opens the door to a whole community of companies with a similar ethos who want to do good by their customers, employees and the world around them.

Becoming B Corp certified: how long does it take?

The length and cost of the verification process can vary depending on your business’s size, complexity and region. Small to medium sized companies as a rule can expect the whole process to take between six to eight months to complete.

1) Register for the B Impact Assessment. This is confidential and free!

2) Determine how your company can integrate stakeholder consideration. You can do this by using the Legal Requirement Tool.

3) Complete the risk review and gather your supporting documents. Make sure you have everything you need to record your answers.

4) Take the Impact Assessment. This can be done online, and you can save your answers and come back later if you don’t want to do it all in one go.

5) Set up your company profile. You will be prompted to do this once you are most of the way through the assessment. Here you start the Disclosure Questionnaire and learn your baseline score. It needs to be over 80, so if it’s less than that you can see where you need to review and re-evaluate.

6) Submit your completed assessment for review. Once you have done this you will wait in the Evaluation Queue for an analyst to review your eligibility.

7) Enter the Evaluation phase. At this point an analyst will look over your company structure in addition to your answers to the entire assessment.

8) Enter the Verification queue. At this point you will need to provide any further information about employees and suppliers.

9) If you’ve reached the 80-point mark, you’ll enter the post-verification stage. Congratulations! Now you can sign the B Corp agreement.

10) Prepare for recertification every three years. Being a B Corp is an ongoing commitment. You can use the Impact Assessment and the certification process as a tool to encourage continuous improvement in all areas of your business.

Why Zen became a B Corp

“We are part of the B Corp movement, a global movement of people using business as a force for good. Being a B Corp gives me and my fellow directors a legal responsibility to make a positive difference to society and the environment. It is a responsibility that we relish and that aligns perfectly with our values. We are also Carbon Neutral, meaning that we take more CO2 out of the atmosphere than we put in – a critical step in tackling climate change.”

Richard Tang, Founder and Chairman of Zen Internet

We’re incredibly proud here at Zen to be a certified B Corporation: we achieved B Corp status in August 2020. Becoming certified has allowed us to focus our efforts and achieve continual improvement in all aspects of our business.

Looking after our people

A company is only as great as its people. We are proud to invest time in our team here at Zen, and career development is widely encouraged. Promoting diversity and inclusion is incredibly important. We have created a number of networking groups with the aim of improving individual and organisational understanding of aspects of diversity.

Taking care of our customers

We care about our customers, and we are regularly found at the top of the Which? table for the most recommended broadband provider for customer service.

Why use our B Corp guide?

The internet is chock-a-block with resources and advice – but how do you separate the good from the bad? You won't have to when you use our B Corp guide. We’re designing the guide that we would have wanted when we were first thinking about applying for B Corp certification: in clear, simple, understandable language.