ENSO is Officially A Certified B Corp!
June 10, 2024
Transparent & Authentic Communication
June 14, 2024
We are so excited to announce that ENSO is officially a Certified B Corp! Thank you to everyone who followed our journey and to the B Lab team for getting us through the process in a clear, understandable, and timely manner. In this blog, we are going to recap the entire process that we went through towards our certification. Make sure you also check out our in-depth video series taking you on our step by step journey to certification on our YouTube channel!
First things first, let’s talk about what B Corp is and why we decided to pursue certification.
What is B Corp?
The B Corp movement aims to centre stakeholders in decision making and to create a more equitable, regenerative economy. B Lab, the nonprofit that stewards the B Corp standards, aims to transform the global economy to benefit all people, communities, and the planet. The B Corp community is made up of leaders in achieving this goal.
While B Corp Certification is a key part of the movement, there is so much more to the community. Between knowledge sharing, the B Impact Assessment, work to shift corporate culture, and more, the B Corp Community is leading the charge for change.
B Corp is all about business as a force for good and the potential we have to make positive impacts on all stakeholder groups. To learn more about the B Corp movement, check out their website here!
B Corp Certification designates a business that meets high standards of verified performance, accountability, and transparency on a variety of factors. Companies must score at least 80 on the B Impact Assessment, demonstrating high social and environmental performance.
Certification also requires a legal commitment to stakeholder governance and accountability to all stakeholder groups. Certification provides increased transparency by allowing for their performance against B Lab’s standards to be displayed publicly. You can view our profile on the B Corp Directory here.
Why Pursue Certification?
At ENSO, we strive to have as much of a positive impact as we can through our own operations and our work with our customers. Because of this, we felt that the B Corp framework and mission aligned very well with our own goals as a business. Because of this we decided to put time and effort into achieving certification.
By becoming B Corp Certified, we are showing that we are committed to positive social and environmental impact and to centering our stakeholders in everything we do. We will continue to hold ourselves to a high standard of integrity and meaningful interactions while communicating transparently.
We are also very excited to join a community of passionate, purpose-driven organisations through the B Corp community. There is a growing number of B Corps in Ireland and across the world that share our values and goals and we are so excited to collaborate with and learn from them.
Overall, the certification process taught us a lot about our own business and stakeholder governance as a whole. These learnings will continue to guide us in our work and our collaborations with the greater community.
Diving Into the B Corp Journey
Now we will discuss the B Corp Certification Journey step by step. Going from starting the B Impact Assessment all the way to certification, we will share what we learned, our challenges, and tips for your own journey!
Step 1: Completing the B Impact Assessment
No matter what, the first step for any company looking to achieve B Corp certification is to complete the B Impact Assessment, or BIA. This step allows you to take a deeper look at your business, its operations, and its impacts across five different areas: governance, workers, community, environment, and customers. Regardless of whether you are aiming for certification, completing the BIA is a great exercise to identify areas for improvement and new goals that you can set for your organisation.
When going through the BIA, it is incredibly important to make sure that you have selected the correct track for your business. The track helps to determine how you progress through the BIA, including point allocations and questions you are asked. Take the time to check your track before you get too far in the BIA. If you finish all the questions and then have to change your track, there is a possibility that you will have to go back and answer different questions and create more work for yourself. The potential tracks are: wholesale/retail, manufacturing, agriculture/growers, services with minor environmental footprint, and services with major environmental footprint. For our BIA, ENSO was on the services with a minor environmental footprint track. If you are unsure which track to choose, make sure to reach out and we can help!
Another key aspect to check before you complete the BIA is your company details. To access this section, click on the settings icon in the menu on the left hand side of the B Corp platform. This will open a dropdown and you can select company details. Make sure to fill out all of the sections because certain data points, particularly related to your products and services descriptions, will be used in the points calculation for your overall BIA score. At ENSO, we made sure all of this information was correct and double checked it as we finished up the BIA.
Once you are all set with your track and company details, you can jump into the BIA! There are a lot of questions that will be specific about your business operations and its impact. You will face two types of questions: operations questions and Impact Business Model Questions. Operations questions refer to policies, practices, and other aspects of your business that are not built to have a specific impact. Impact Business Models (IBMs) refer to specific facets of your business that are built to have an impact on a specific stakeholder group. For example, ENSO got points for the Impact Improvement IBM because we specifically work to help other businesses improve their environmental and social impacts. Make sure you take note of which questions you are answering, because if you think your business has an IBM, you will need more documentation to prove it than you would for an operations question.
Speaking of documentation, we highly recommend gathering documentation as you work through the BIA. As you answer questions, organise your proof points in an accessible way so you can spread out the hard work of ensuring you have adequate documentation for the next phases of certification. At ENSO, we used the ENSO platform to organise all of our proof points and to assign tasks to our team members, should we need more information or to pull specific policies or other documents. We found this incredibly helpful throughout our certification journey. Whether you use the ENSO platform, or another organisational system, make sure to keep track of what you’ve done and what documentation you have. We promise it will make the next steps easier! Do keep in mind that we definitely weren’t perfect with our organisation and the exact documents we pulled, but the initial work we did during the BIA was invaluable throughout the certification process.
Once you are confident that you have completed the BIA to the best of your ability and have gathered as much documentation as you can, you are ready to submit! Once you hit that submit button, you will move on to the Evaluation Queue. We spent about four weeks on the BIA and putting together the majority of our supporting documents before submission.
For a more in depth look at the BIA process and the topics we discussed in this section, check out the following vlogs!
Step 2: Evaluation Queue
While you are in the Evaluation Queue, you will have a few tasks to complete. You can view these in the Review section of the BIA. All of the tasks for each section of the certification process will be laid out in an organised manner, making it simple to stay on top of them. We also turned on notifications, meaning that the ENSO team got emails when new tasks were assigned or when information was needed.
The tasks that you complete will include paying your submission fee and signing the B Corporation Statement. This is a self declaration that states that you have answered the BIA honestly and accurately. It must be signed by an executive member of your company and must also include details about who completed the assessment and how it was done.
While you are in the Evaluation Queue, you can still make edits to your BIA. This is the last point in the certification process that this will be possible so make sure to double check your answers. Depending on how long you are in the Evaluation Queue, you may even have time to implement a new practice or policy that can get you additional points!
Another task that you will see in the Evaluation Queue will relate to the B Lab Legal Requirement. Every B Corp certified organisation must add this legal amendment to their articles of association to show their commitment to stakeholder governance and positive impact. To learn more about this change, as well as get more specifics about the Evaluation Queue and the full outline of the certification process, check out these vlogs!
Step 3: Evaluation Stage
When we moved into the Evaluation Stage, we were assigned a wonderful Evaluation Analyst who did a preliminary check on our BIA and confirmed the track we had selected. On top of this, we were asked specific questions that helped to confirm our track and eligibility for B Corp Certification, including inquiries about any potential involvement in controversial industries like fossil fuels or tobacco.
Our analyst also asked us more specific questions about the Impact Improvement IBM as a first check that it applied to us. I took the time to make sure we provided as much relevant information as possible to ensure that our analyst could make an informed decision.
Overall this process was very quick for us. Our analyst was incredibly helpful and responsive. I made it a priority to be prepared and to respond as soon as any requests came in, which helped to move the process forward. I highly recommend making sure you are as prepared and responsive as possible, as this will make your journey smoother and quicker! We can’t control how long we are in the queues but we can complete our tasks in a timely manner.
To see more specifics about the Evaluation Stage, check out this vlog!
Step 4: Verification Queue
The Verification Queue included more tasks than the Evaluation Queue because it is all about starting to upload supporting documentation. This is done through IBM documentation and Operational Highlights. As mentioned before, if you have an IBM, you will absolutely need to provide extra documentation to prove your impact. This process starts during the Verification Queue as you are assigned specific questions from the IBM section to substantiate.
In terms of Operational Highlights, certain questions from each of the five different areas of the BIA are flagged. You have to pick two of these flagged questions to provide documentation for in each of the five areas. Luckily, for both the IBM questions and the Operational Highlights questions, I was able to pretty quickly upload the necessary proof points. This is because of the extra time that we took to organise and update any documentation we thought we might need while completing the BIA. Once all the requested information was uploaded, all we had to do was wait to be assigned a Verification Analyst.
To see more about the Verification Queue, check out this vlog!
Step 5: Verification Stage
Of the stages of the certification process, the Verification Stage is definitely the most involved. Once we were assigned our Verification Analyst, they went through our BIA in more depth and asked for more documentation and clarification around our answers. This also included asking us to fill out specific templates from B Lab to review information around things like female management and the percentage of our workforce that is local.
Again, this process was helped along by the work we had done in organising our documentation while completing the BIA. However, there were definitely questions and specific pieces of information that were requested that I hadn’t pulled or even realised we might need. This just meant that I needed to take a little more time and collaborate with my team to make sure we could answer all of the requested questions from our analyst! We worked together to complete our documentation upload.
Throughout this entire process our analyst was incredibly responsive and clear in what information he needed from us. We got the chance to speak directly with him on our focused review call. This call is required during the Verification Stage and allows your analyst to clarify information, discuss any changes in point totals, ask for additional documentation, and to lay out next steps. Our call was very straightforward and informative, which helped us to understand the slight change in our point total from when we submitted the BIA and what to expect for the rest of the process.
Make sure to keep in mind that it is totally normal to see your point total change a bit during the Verification Stage! Because of this, it is recommended to go into the certification process with at least 85 points on the BIA in case your score drops slightly. The five point buffer will help you stay above that 80 point requirement. We went into the certification process with around 96 points and certified at 90.4.
After completing all of our tasks in the Verification Stage and completing our review call, our Verification Analysts completed some final checks. A secondary analyst then completed one more check to ensure that all of the hard work our analyst had done was correct and there was nothing else to clarify.
To learn a bit more about the Verification Stage and the review call, check out these vlogs!
Step 6: Post Verification
After our secondary check was completed, we were officially moved to the Post Verification Stage. At this point, we were as close as we could be to official certification. The last step was to sign the B Corporation Agreement. This agreement encompasses all of the main values and requirements of B Lab and Certified B Corps including stakeholder governance, the terms and conditions for certification, and the rights and obligations of the company. After we signed this agreement, we were shortly sent an email confirming our certification!
Step 7: Certification
Once we heard of our official certification via email, we were immediately excited to share the great news. However, we wanted to make sure that we gave this great achievement a proper announcement and roll out. We worked with our team to decide how to share our achievement. B Lab was incredibly helpful in this, as we were given multiple resources regarding communication and best practices for announcing our certification.
What Next?
Now that we have officially announced that we are a certified B Corp, there are many more exciting opportunities to come. We are very much looking forward to engaging with the B Corp community in Ireland and globally to learn, share knowledge, and work towards a better future for people and for the planet.
Beyond this, we will be setting new goals internally to continually improve our organisation in line with the B Corp standards. This is very exciting to us as we identified potential areas for action while completing the BIA and are looking forward to getting started! We will communicate our progress through our ENSO page and our social media so stay tuned for more insights and updates.
How You Can Get Involved
If you are interested in beginning your own B Corp journey, there are a couple of great ways to get started! Firstly, we would absolutely recommend checking out the BIA, regardless of whether you are planning to pursue certification right now. The BIA can help you understand your strengths as a business and areas that you can look into for opportunities for improvement. As an internationally recognised standard, the B Corp framework presented in the BIA is an incredibly helpful, free tool for businesses looking to understand and improve their impact.
Another way to get involved is to reach out to us! Our sustainability strategist and advisor Erin has officially completed her B Leader training and is always ready to have a chat about B Corp. Whether you would like support on your own journey or just want to chat about the BIA and possible future opportunities, reach out to the ENSO team and we would be happy to set up a call.
Finally, make sure to engage with B Lab to stay up to date on the movement and to learn more about how you can get involved. Specifically, get connected with your official country partner! If you are a business in Ireland, B Lab Ireland is your place to go for all things B Corp. Check them out on LinkedIn!
Conclusion
Thank you again to everyone who supported our B Corp certification process and made it possible, including all of you who followed along with our journey! Achieving certification is just the beginning, and we are so excited to continue to learn and grow as an organisation while working with other passionate businesses on their sustainability strategies.