Sustainability within the events industry is a widely recognised concept for both organisers and suppliers, advocating for a more environmentally friendly way to host events in 2024. Clients are also becoming more aware of the positive change they can seek in their events for a more transparent collaboration. Attaining a B Corp certification can enhance the reputation and trust of a company while attracting like-minded stakeholders and showing a lead in sustainable and responsible business practices.
What is a B Corp certification?
US-based company B Lab offers the B Corp certification that measures a company’s social and economic impact. To qualify to become B Corp certified, companies must follow the steps of assessment, improvement, submission, review, verification, and legal requirements, resulting in gaining the certification after paying a fee based on the company’s annual sales.
How do I get a B Corp certification?
The first step is for companies to amend their corporate governance structure to account for the interests of workers, the community, the environment, and shareholder interests. Companies must complete a B Impact Assessment (BIA), which evaluates the company’s operations and business model. They need to score at least 80 points out of 200 points to move forward in the certification process. Companies must provide evidence in certain categories as part of the BIA assessment.
What are the categories in the BIA?
The first category, Governance, examines a company’s mission, ethics, accountability, and transparency. It explores the company’s decision-making processes and evaluates its stakeholder engagement. The second category focuses on the company’s relationship with its employees. It closely assesses worker compensation, benefits, training, and engagement. It evaluates a company’s work environment, including its employees’ health, safety, job satisfaction, and career development. The third category is Community, which looks at the company’s local economic impact, including diversity, community service, and charitable giving. It also evaluates a company’s relationships with suppliers and vendors. A key aspect in assessing the community involves practices such as social equity, civic engagement, and the support of local or small-scale suppliers. During the B Corp certification process, B Lab, for example, assesses a company’s environmental practices, focusing on waste reduction, recycling, energy and water use, greenhouse gas emissions, carbon management, and sustainable resource conservation as critical factors for eligibility. The Customer category evaluates the impact of a company’s products and services on customer and client well-being, focusing on support for health and safety and compliance with privacy and data protection best practices.
What does the BIA do?
The BIA provides a comprehensive framework for companies to measure their impact in these areas, encouraging continuous improvement and providing benchmarks for comparison with other companies. Attaining a high score in these categories and maintaining it is a vital part of becoming and remaining a B Corp-certified company. For companies that still need to get a minimum of 80 points in the assessment stage of the process, the BIA will provide the company with feedback on what to improve upon to get the desired B Corp certification.
Why be B Lab’s B Corp certified?
B Corp is not only a certification; it’s a community. When you become B Corp-certified, you automatically join the B Hive community of other B Corp-certified businesses. B Lab’s mission for its B Corp certification is to encourage all companies to contribute positively, stating, “We won’t stop until all businesses are a force for good.” The UK is now home to the world’s second-largest B Corp community, connecting other B Corp-certified companies to follow B Lab’s vision to transform the global economy to benefit all people, communities, and the planet.
The results
B Corp-certified businesses have seen great results for the sector and their communities. They have seen a positive impact on their employees, customer loyalty, higher levels of innovation and market leadership. A recent study has found that B Corps outperform other UK companies across multiple business metrics. On average, B Corps have seen faster turnover and employee headcount growth, a greater focus on community engagement, a more robust governance process, and higher expectations about their company’s future development.
The B in B Lab stands for ‘benefit for all’; this means companies, businesses, clients, and customers. With a B Corp certification, sustainability will no longer be a concept but an action to witness and a movement to join.
For an industry like the events sector, where there is a high general perception of wastage and carbon use, the B Corp certification could go a long way to proving how companies involved in events are doing all they can to minimise their environmental impact and to show a lead on this journey.
Conference News is pleased to announce the launch of its call for papers for the CN Sustainability Summit 2024, with submissions due by 22 April 2024.
