Becoming a B Corp can help your business to achieve its social, environmental and financial goals. It won’t guarantee success but it gives you a platform for influence and a way to build community engagement into your core business strategy.
how to become a b corp
The size and complexity of your company will affect how quickly you can move through the steps to B Corp certification. For example, smaller companies — especially service companies or companies without outside investors — should be able to move through the Quick Start Guide in less than six weeks. Larger companies with a sizable number of employees and/or departments will probably need the full six weeks or more.
In my experience, you will have the best chance of successfully completing the certification process if:
- You have the ability to see that “the perfect is the enemy of the good.” If you try to be perfect on the B Impact Assessment, you run the risk of getting bogged down and never finishing. Aim for good enough and continue to improve your score in the future.
- You or someone else in your company “owns” the project. If many people are working on a project, it often means that no one is actually responsible for moving it forward. Make sure that someone (whether it is you, an external consultant or another employee) has taken ownership of the project and will dedicate the time and energy necessary to see it through to completion.
- You have access to financial, worker, supplier, community and environmental data. If you don’t personally have access to this data, you need access to the people who are responsible for this data (e.g., the facility manager for energy usage or the human resources manager for employee metrics).
Finally, do not automatically assume that planning for six weeks is too aggressive to complete this process. Try keeping everything to a tight schedule and adjust as needed. You might be surprised at how much you can get done in a short time.
