March is a month of celebration and reflection for us as we join the global community in celebrating B-Corp month. It’s a time to celebrate our commitment to being a force for good in the world and to reflect on the impact we’ve made. This year’s B Corp Month theme is “This Way Forward”, which calls on organisations like ours to recognise that certification isn’t a destination but an ongoing commitment.

You might be wondering why we decided to become a B-Corp, we’ll explain a little about B-Corp and why we were determined to be certified.

What is a B-Corp?

A B-Corp is a business that is serious about its social and environmental performance, transparency and accountability. Becoming a B-Corp means you are proving that you’re responsible in all areas of the business and at all stages of the supply chain as well as being committed to balancing people, planet and profit.

There are currently over 8,200 businesses globally who have certified as B-Corps. The B-Corp community in the UK represents a broad cross section of industries and sizes, comprising of over 1,500 companies and 158 of those companies are employee owned just like us.

Why did we become certified?

Baxendale Employee Ownership was part of Baxendale Advisory who were one of the first B-Corps in 2014 in the UK.

As we began to define ourselves as an independent business, regaining our B-Corp certification was one of our first objectives in 2022. We wanted to be able to measure and celebrate the impact areas which were already embedded within our business and challenge ourselves in those areas where we could improve.

We began our journey to becoming recertified in April 2023 and became a certificated B-Corp in December 2023.

The Assessment Process

Every B Corp has been independently assessed by B Lab, the not-for-profit organisation behind the certification. The assessment process is the same worldwide and it’s a rigorous one, covering five impact areas: governance, workers, customers, environment, and community. That makes it a truly holistic certification, not focused on any single issue.

Every three years B Corps must go through a recertification period, to make sure businesses are keeping up their commitment to responsible business.

The B Impact Score

To get certified, you need to achieve a B Impact Score of 80 out of a possible 200 on your application, calculated across all the impact areas.

Questions and sections are weighted differently depending on the industry, size and geography of your business, as well as what B Corp considers the most relevant to being a responsible business at the time of your assessment. One of the biggest scores you’ll get is for changing your Articles of Association (the constitutional document of the company) to make a commitment to social responsibility and the environment over profit.

Any score over zero is considered good, as it shows a business is doing something positive for society and the environment. Between 80 and 100 is great, 100 to 160 is outstanding and 160 to 200 is extraordinary. Given our Articles reflected our employee owned structure, we scored a solid 108 in this area. Employee owned businesses in general score highly in the ‘workers’ section of the B Corp assessment.

What’s next?

Later this year we will be publishing our first impact report, publicly sharing our current position, our ambition, and our roadmap to give us both the accountability and the guidance to keep doing better.

Hannah Welch