A big milestone on our B Corp journey!
Yesterday, 20 July 2022 I submitted AG Comms’ Business Impact Assessment (BIA) and we are now officially in the queue to becoming B Corp certified. This is such a big milestone for AG (and me personally), and I’m feeling pretty giddy about it!
Seven months ago, as part of our purpose transformation, I shared a new vision for AG and our goal to become B Corp certified by 2025. I had no idea how long the process would take or what the journey would be like, but I was 100% sure that I wanted AG to join this global community of forward-thinking companies who use their business as a force for good – prioritising people and planet alongside shareholders.
The BIA process is a complex one and I knew I needed some help to complete it. So, in March this year, I made the decision to join the UK for Good B Corp Accelerator Programme with three other Cheshire based companies. Over seven sessions, B Leaders Andy Hawkins and Donna Okell helped us complete the five sections of the BIA; Governance, Workers, Customers, Community and Environment for our respective companies. I found the Environment section particularly tough to get my head around – and so was very grateful for their support on that one! They walked us through each section and helped us translate the questions and understand our business impact. A business needs to get a minimum of 80 points to certify and the average business scores 50.
I learned so much on the accelerator programme. Before joining, I had completed the BIA (or so I thought!) and had a score of just under 80. After a few sessions with Andy and Donna, I realised AG was having way more impact than I initially thought. They helped me to recognise and evidence this in a much better way –increasing our pre-certification score to nearly 100!
During the BIA process, we changed our Articles of Association with Companies House (UK’s register of companies). This is a legally binding agreement committing us to share our stakeholder impact report alongside our annual financial accounts report and balance the interests of all stakeholders (meaning people and planet in B Corp world!) alongside that of any shareholders.
So, after seven months, seven one-hour accelerator sessions and a lot of hard work behind the scenes from my team, we have finally submitted our BIA! There’s a big queue for certification and the process is expected to take around nine months to complete. During that time AG will pass another company year end, so we will prepare the evidence to update our financials, improve and summarise our impact report, and hopefully increase our BIA score a little more.
Watch this space!