BONUS EPISODE: In the hot seat, conversing with Nick Day about B Corps, sustainability, purpose, and more.

Basically beyond making a profit, what benefit does your business have for society, for people, for the planet? I stumbled across B Corp after a really good early midlife crisis. 2018 or 2019, around about 30% of the British population said that their job provided them with no meaning and was more than likely contributing to destroying the planet. We start off all our engagements with what we call the kickoff session. So we run typically an online workshop with the whole company where we explain to everyone in the company, what is B Corp? Where did it come from? Why does this company want to be a B Corp and what do we hope to get out of it?

Welcome to the HR LND Podcast where we explore cutting edge HR trends and best practices with top leaders who are shaping the future of work. Hello and welcome back to the HR LND Podcast. My name is Nick Day, CEO at JGA Recruitment Group and we are specialist global HR and HR tech recruiters. Now today I'm joined by Tim Jones, who's founder of Grow Good, an ESG and B Corp consultancy and host of the Better B Podcast. Now Tim is a one man B Corp legend and as a speaker, motivator and expert B Corp consultant. Tim's going to join me today all the way from Christchurch, New Zealand to talk to the HR LND podcast listeners all about the B Corp businesses, sustainability, finding, purpose and more. Now to give you some context, since 2015 Tim has helped more than 100 businesses on their journey to becoming B Corp certified. And Grow Good itself is a three time certified B Corp. Now as HR leaders, we're all committed to building inclusive, equitable and regenerative environments for all of our people and. But why should we stop there? Why not build an equitable and regenerative planet as well? Why can't we all start by building A businesses as a force for good? Well, let's find out. Welcome Tim Jones to the HR L&D podcast. How are you feeling today?

I'm doing good Nick, so I can go with a cura for New Zealand and I'm also half Welsh so I'll go with Shamai just to cover all our, all our listener bases.

Fantastic. That is something I didn't know, but what a great way to start. Well, let's start with the first question, ask all of my guests, which is this. What are the words human resources mean to you?

It's a great. That's a, It's a great and a loaded question. I, I always felt I struggled with the HR department seeing companies I work for because I've always been a bit of a rebel. A rebel, a rabble rouser pushing the envelopes. So yeah, I, I quite often found myself possibly having conversations with hr. So yeah, it doesn't have. Always have great memories for me but I think increasingly yeah, HR is everything that you sort of open with. You know, how do we create places where people can thrive. But I still, I don't know, I guess a lot of people have changed that people and culture or that HR just, it still seems to have got what's baggage around it. I think as a non HR professional that would be.

I don't think that's incorrect. I think the industry is evolving now into the world of people management. Right. And I think you were talking about being a rebel sometimes towards hr. I mean arguably at the end of this conversation we're going to need a few rebel people or HR professionals to push back to their own businesses if they want to discover more and evolve their businesses into becoming one that really can impact sustainability in the planet. So let's jump into what's really important, what we want to talk about today. What is a B Corp? Where does it come from? Perhaps you can give our listeners some context.

Totally. So B Corporation. So certified B corporations are this new form of business which must balance purpose and profit. So rather than solely focusing on maximizing shareholder return, they must consider the impact of their operations on all their stakeholders and more specifically that would mean their local communities, their workers, their customers and their supply chain. And the B Corp, I like to call it the creation myth story sort of where it came from. It actually came from a group of guys or two guys in particular who used to run a company called AND one which back in the day was basically second only to Nike for basketball apparel or shoe sales globally this sort of late 90s, early 2000s. And one of the co founders of ANN1 went on to become the co founder of the B Corp movement. His name is J. Cohen Gilbert and he had a couple of what I call depending on the age group or the age of the person listening. If you're a Monty Python fan, if you're of a certain middle aged disposition, you might remember the sketch where John Cleese slaps Michael Palin in the face with a big salmon. And I call it the ex, the existential wet fish to the face moment when something just comes in, hits you in life that shakes you metaphysically and sends you on a different track. And Jay had a couple of those moments in quick succession and he kind of realized that actually us selling more shoes than Nike, no one really cares, apart from me and a couple of other people on the board here. But fundamentally, the world will keep turning and no one else really actually cares if we sell one more basketball shoe than Nike does, you know, other than maybe a couple of people at Nike. And so he, he started looking in the business and thinking about, well, you know, how can I do some more good on the journey? Rather than aiming just to make as much money as possible. And so the company was headquartered in Philadelphia, quite a low socioeconomic area. They started working with some charitable partners to do leadership outreach programs to at risk youth, helping get kids off a justice path system into sort of meaningful employment. I guess before it was cool and trendy with your Googles and your other large companies providing yoga therapy and massage therapy and, you know, all that kind of stuff that they were doing that they also offered significant amounts of employee ownership to the staff, which again, fairly unheard of at scale, that they were doing it. And then they also started looking at their supply chain and making sure that, you know, I guess, like I say this was late 90s, early 2000s. They were trying to make the supply chain better. But I wouldn't say it was a world class supply chain that they, you know, that they sort of created. And having gone down this path, you know, all their stakeholders thought the business was amazing, that the customers thought they were fantastic, their employees thought they were legends, the local community thought they were great, the supply chain thought they were great. And that was working really well up until 2005 when Jay exited the business. And on taking the business to Wall street, the first thing they did was look at all the numbers and sort of go, well, you've got a great brand, but the numbers are terrible because you're giving away all this equity to your staff and your community and, you know, so we need to rip all that out. And so having gone through the sale process of the business, he got together with one of the other guys, Bart Houlihan, who was his chief operating officer and cfo, and one and one of the Wall street bankers, Andrew Castle. And they came together and initially looked at creating a new business together where they would, you know, keep all this good stuff. They'd bake it in from day one and not get rid of it. And over a few conversations, they looked at creating a retail store, pizza stores, blah, blah, blah. And eventually they sort of had this moment of saying, well, hang on, instead of creating one more business, what if we created a global movement of businesses that aim to be the best for the world, not the Best in the world. And so in 2006 they bought this B Corp certification to market. They took it to a group of their connections and said, hey look, you know, we've created this thing, would you give it a go and see what it looks like? And so, yeah, that was 2006 and now we're 7,000 plus businesses further down the track and it's becoming a real force, you know, for good at scale.

It's been a real meteoric rise. And I've been watching, we, we launched my business here, JJ Recruitment, in 2008 and at that point I something I'd never heard of. And now suddenly, you know, it's seeing more and more businesses pop up with their B Corp certification and a lot of other business striving to achieve it. Why do you think it, what was it that gained it such traction?

Why did it grow?

Why is it growing so quickly? How did that start? What motivated you to become a B Corp specialist as you are? Because obviously something must have resonated with you. And what's the B? Tell me a little bit more about the B.

Is the B Corp. That's the million dollar question, which I frequently forget to tell people when I explain what B Corp is because I guess like I'm a fish in water and I just know that. So the B stands for benefit. So basically beyond making a profit, what benefit does your business have for society, for people, for the planet? I stumbled across B Corp after a really good early midlife crisis. So I had a similar existential wet fish to the face moment. Alad J. Where? Here, where I live in Christchurch, New Zealand. So I'm originally, like I say originally from the UK, live in Christchurch, New Zealand. In 2010, 2011, we had a series of massive earthquakes. And so it's well documented that if you have, you know, a collective near death experience and literally, you know, we had a near death experience when you're being rattled around in the house at 4am when the first earthquake went off and you literally thought you were going to die, followed fairly closely in 2012 by the birth of our daughter. Over that sort of two year period, I experienced what in the psychological literature would be called a subconscious awakening. So a near death experience, death of a loved one close to you or someone close to you, or the birth of a child can trigger this massive change in perspective on the world. And so I used to sell medical devices and that's quite pertinent at the minute, I guess. Plenty of people currently watching Painkillers on Netflix, you know, pretty Much. That's how the medical device world works. I used to sell hips and knees and then instruments and implants, so spinal instruments and implants. So my job was to convince an orthopedic or neurosurgeon to use my piece of metal wear rather than next piece of metal wear. And around the fringes of that, companies realize that there's lots of money to be made from that. And so maybe we will send the surgeon to a conference in New York and maybe we'll turn a blind eye to the fact that his wife and kids are coming along for the week, you know, blah, blah, blah. And so I'd been immersed in that industry and enjoyed it because part of my job was to go into the operating theater and work with surgical teams and make sure that they were using our product in the best way. And, you know, you're almost like a walking, talking Google for them to turn around and go, what do I do next? And you kind of go, well, you get the widget and give it, give it a hit here and right. There you go. And so, you know, a job that fundamentally was quite full of meaning, but the wider industry was clearly just about profit maximization. And so having had this kind of epiphany, I just realized, well, that that seems a bit average. And there was one of the companies I used to work for that there was a lawsuit against it, where basically they knowingly pursued the launch of a product. And the first four surgeries, patients died on the operating table. And the main reason they kept going was because the surgeon was a shareholder in the company and he wanted to make sure that the product, you know, got launched and so got really disillusioned and left that industry and then ended up in the world of property consultancy. So I worked for a firm of surveyors and engineers, and I kind of thought that the medical device world was pretty corrupt and, you know, all about the money. And then I discovered the world of commercial property development and I realized actually, not only do they not really care about people, this crew don't even care about the planet. It's, you know, and living in Christchurch, where we were literally rebuilding the city and, and the populace wanted a livable city that was green, that was kid friendly, you know, that had great public transport. Meanwhile, the property developers wanted cheap, quick, and basically biggest financial return I can get on putting up the quickest building in, in the cheapest way. And so there are all these tensions that were going around in my head. And working for this property consultancy, I just started Googling, you Know better business or I can't remember why Google, but I was looking for, for some kind of HR package to help because I was starting to build a team in the south island office. So I was looking for some sort of HR guidance, ironically, how to, how to start building a team and galvanizing your teams. I wasn't getting that much support internally from the HR team, but also had this real interest in green business, you know, and how could, how could we as a business plug into the rebuild and help build a better city? And on this Internet rabbit hole journey, I discovered B Corp. And I just thought, wow, this is, this is the thing. It's. Instead of just make as much money as possible, it's actually consider how you operate as a corporate citizen really holistically and have like a higher, yeah, sense of meaning, higher sense of purpose. And so I reached out to, well, I had a look on the listing and thought, well, there won't be one in New Zealand because New Zealand's normally pretty far behind this kind of stuff. Turned out there were two of them in New Zealand and there was one in Christchurch. And so I emailed the CEO and said, hey, I've just stumbled across this B thing, this would have been 2014. And just, can I just kind of have a chat, see what you know. And I booked what, you know, should have been a 45 minute coffee meeting. I left Steve Arda's office about four hours later, just, you know, like head blow, like, wow. There is a whole other way of running business which just seems to make a whole lot of sense. Like I say, instead of just how much money do we make? And by doing that, it's typically putting pressure on the people, it's putting pressure on our suppliers, it's leading to a worse product, you know, for our customers because we're cutting a corner somewhere. It's actually, no, how do we, how do we make this thing better for everyone? So, yeah, here we are, however many years later.

Nice. That's. It's 11 years ago. Sorry to hear about your challenges at the start of that story. But what was really interesting, we linked this to the world of human resources. And the people listening to this is where there was a clash between your values and the values of a business and how if they're not aligned, ultimately you have an unhappy employee. Now, okay, that's, this is one individual. You put that at scale, suddenly we're talking about some of the major cultural challenges that HR professionals are facing, which is, and also delivery. You know, they're often tasked with, with evolving cultures and transforming cultures, aligning values with workplace, you know, aspirations and so on and so forth. But they'll know that that kind of change is never easy. Systematic change is never easy. It's compl. Takes time. It's one of the biggest challenges that people, professionals are facing at the minute. And it requires really, really strong leadership. It really also requires robust and credible alternatives right to the existing system. And that's something that, again, you often met with resistance from boards or from people that don't want change. So putting this into the context of a B Corp business, if I'm an HR leader listening to this at the minute, or even a business leader, and I want to become B Corp certified, how can we start that journey? What are the first kind of steps we should be taking in order to make that cultural shift?

That's a great question. And just reflecting back on that, as you mentioned, we've got a podcast of our own where we interview B Corps who've been through the process. And we typically try and talk to the CEO, work out why did they do it and what did they learn on the journey. And the most recent one I recorded last week, Ollie Hunt, he actually works for, he created his own medical device company. And he saw and was. He had a glimpse into how the medical industry is running. And as he said, you know.

The key for me is having that strong leadership because, you know, he founded this company, he basically has a company called Med Salv, where they take products in the medical device system are sold as single use because it's more profitable for the companies to sell you as many as possible. And the hospital throwing it into the rubbish bin, that's not their problem, that's the hospital's problem. And that's, you know, the population's problem, you know, the tax, the planet's problem. And the plan is problem, obviously. Yeah. And so he's created this product where basically he'll take what could have been a single use product and he'll basically remanufacture it and recycle it and put it back into the system. And you know, he was saying, talking about their core values and you know, he literally says, if anyone in the company wants to stand up and say we've gone against one of our core values, I'm cool with that. What I found typically working in large companies was I would point to the values and then there'd just be some sniggering and you go, he mentioned the values. What a silly little boy. It's like, yeah, that's just for marketing. And so I think the key is, is leadership has got to get this. And if you know why they will get it. And I think why they are getting. And this is coming back to, you know, why is B Corp growing so much? What we're typically finding is businesses are coming under pressure from four main groups. From customers, from employees, from their supply chain, and increasingly from investment. And all four of those groups of people are looking at your business and going, sure. Beyond making money, though, tell me about how you do that and what, what are you doing for people and planet and why should, as a prospective employee, why should I come and work for you? There was a really. It's one of my favorite statistics because it's so awful. It was a YouGov survey in the UK I think it was about 2018 or 2019. Around about 30% of the British population said that their job provided them with no meaning and was more than likely contributing to destroying the planet.

Where do you go from there?

So where do we go from there? What are the steps? I'm an HR leader listening to this, you know, I'm passionate about improving the. Our business. In the four facets you've talked about for our employees, for our supply chain and stakeholders and so on and so forth. What's the next step we should take? Because we know that there's going to be resistance here potentially within a business because we're talking about change, we're probably talking about investment, we're probably talking about a lot of our books being, you know, looked over. I don't know the ins and outs of the process, but presumably there's going to be some due diligence here as to whether or not you can certify a company, because I know it doesn't come easy. Tell us about the steps that need to be taken and things that perhaps they need to be prepared for.

Yeah, I mean, so, so I think Jamie Oliver, his, his restaurant group is a B corp. And when he got the certification, he described it as. Saying it was, it was as inv as having the tax man have a rifle around your nickel draw. You know, they get into the weeds. They, they want to know that you, that you can prove the things that you're claiming that you're doing. That's for sure.

I think like any change, you know, people only change when they're sick and tired of being sick and tired. And so typically there's, there's going to be some push or pull factor here. Either, you know, you're really struggling to recruit People, it's like we are, we are hemorrhaging employees to the other companies. And this is part of my kind of theory of change, is if we, if we can create more B Corps who are having a better party on the street, more people are going to want to work for them, more people want to go buy them, more people want to invest in them. So there's possibly going to be some, some, yeah, like pull factor, push factors where you might be losing out to similar organizations of a similar size, similar magnitude, who have got a clearly declared higher purpose and are a big or, or at least able to demonstrate that they're making a positive contribution. Desire for meaning and contribution and purpose is innately human. And I think if you look over business for the. Since the Industrial Revolution, that's kind of just been like, we can put that in a little box. You come to work for eight hours, you just do what you're told to do. You do your spreadsheet, you do your thing, and then you get to go home and then you get to be a human again. I think we've dehumanized work historically since the Industrial Revolution. And so push factors and then some pull factors are going to be, well, you know, are you someone who generally wants to make a difference in your working life? And I think, you know, HR teams are hugely instrumental in helping define and develop the culture and, you know, pushing where L and D is happening and helping companies go on that journey and providing the evidence saying, look, actually, you know, we're not going to get the next lot of employees coming through the next two to three years because we're lacking in a purpose and a mission and a vision. But this is the key, is it has to be authentic. Because increasingly, like I say, companies I work for, they, they used to have the values inscribed in stone, you know, on the wall, but they would ignore them to make more money.

Yeah.

And increasingly people, they're sitting through that so, so quickly and, and where possible and practical, they will vote with their feet and go, this, you know, it doesn't feel right. And so I think so beyond anything. There's a guy. Let me just find the quote before I butcher it. It's called Gus Speth, and he is a environmental lawyer. And when it comes to sort of, you know, trying to make a change into the world and, and, and, and solve big conflict problems, he said, I used to think that the top global environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse, and climate change. I thought with 30 years of good science, we could address these problems. But I was wrong. The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed and apathy. And to deal with these, we need a spiritual and cultural transformation. And we scientists don't know how to do that. And I think that, for me, is the crux of where HR and L and D can play this massive role. It's like, actually, how do we rehumanize work? How do we help senior leaders genuinely connect to be their authentic versions of themselves? How do we have these proper conversations at work about big things that matter, you know, which again, I mean, I'm 10 years out of being employed, so maybe things have changed, but for me, it was always kind of like, keep your nose down, don't put your head above the parapet, don't point the things out, don't point it to the elephant in the room, just get on with your job. Because actually, we don't want to be challenged. And so, yeah, I think HR can help, really create a genuine culture of challenge and let's actually call things out which aren't working well, and let's create a better company. Which is why our program to help people become a B corp, we call it be better, Just be better than you were yesterday. You know, we're not, we're not expecting everyone to be perfect and, you know, do what you can with what you've got today to be 1% better for people and planet. That will compound, you know, once you start going on the journey, I think, you know, it's the journey of a thousand miles starts on the first step, blah, blah, blah. You know, it's like. Yeah.

As well, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, 100%.

I mean, we're seeing a lot of this, this change happening and it's great, you know, it's. There's a real movement happening anyway with people trying to improve their business in terms of inclusivity, in terms of, you know, divers. And why not, why not limit that? I mean, we need to keep looking at sustainability and beyond as well. Right. And economically and so on, and the impact that we have. And I think obviously this is a movement towards that. So I'm an HR professional. I've decided, you know what, there's something I'm passionate about. I've managed to convince the board this is a journey they should follow. What's the first step? And maybe they'd contact someone like yourself. Tim would be the first step on that, on that journey.

Yes. So, I mean, I would 100% advise anyone who's listening, who's even vaguely interested, so to become a B corp, you have to navigate what's called the B Corp Impact assessment. Now to go. If you just Google B Impact assessment or B Corp Impact Assessment, it will pop up. It's completely free for you to sign up and create an account and start looking at your business through the lens of being a B Corp. The only times you would ever need to pay any money is if you decided you do need some help from someone like myself and there's a ton of us around the world who can help you do that or, and, or when you actually want to go and get your, your self assessment independently verified to actually get the B Corp designation, you might be able see my B Corp certificate behind me here. So to actually get the certificate and be independently verified, you have to pay a, pay, you know, a fee to go have that audit done. But to go and have a look at the impact assessment, what we typically find it's, it's, it is a true tool of illumination because it will, you'll be asked questions of your business that you just have not even. I didn't even know that was a thing and now that I know that's a thing, I kind of can't unsee it. And now I want to go and have a conversation with someone internally and work out do we do this? Have we even thought about this? Or, or actually, you know, we've kind of been trying to work out how to do this and actually this question has just posed it in a way that makes it really tangible that we can go, oh I get it, we just need a policy or we need to change this or we have a look at that. So the B Corp assessment is a really cool framework and roadmap that. It's kind of like a galvanizing tool quite often where it will bring these disparate strategies and ideas across different parts of the business. So people like. So the assessment looks at five areas of your business, looks at your governance struct. So who owns the organization? Do you have codes of ethics? Do you have whistleblower policies? Is it transparent to work out who does own the company? Are you doing social and environmental impact measurement and reporting? So that's possibly your HR and sustainability team having to have, you know, oh, we need to have a chat. The next section is workers, which predominantly is going to be HR team looking at what benefits do we give to our staff, you know, what holiday entitlement do they get beyond state mandated, what training and development opportunities do they get. But then you move into community and that's sort of volunteer days, financial contributions. So okay, now all of a sudden maybe HR is having a conversation with the finance team. It also looks at supply chain. Oh, so hang on, we need to have a chat to the operations team about where we buy some stuff from. Then the next section is your environmental impact. So waste usage, water usage, power usage, emissions, etc. Etc. So again, if HR is leading this, okay, we're back to having a chat with the sustainability team and possibly also the ops team again. And then the last section looks at your customer model. So what is it that you do and you know, who's it provided to and do you have quality assurance guarantees, warranties? So all of a sudden we're now talking to the marketing and sales team. So if we typically find it could be sustainability that's driving B Corp, it could be hr, it could be Ops, or it could be marketing. Because wherever the sort of the main driving forces come from, and I guess depending on the size and scale of the company, a lot of companies don't have a full time sustainability officer. And so what we find is it's maybe ops, marketing or finance or hr, who's been B Corp as a special project. And that's I think, really where the value of someone like us comes in. Because if you don't understand sustainability, it is a bit of a. Yeah, there's not much plain English language used in the assessment, that's for sure. But yeah, so it's a really useful tool to build, you know, to get the team together, break down some silos and galvanize some strategies that you've, you've maybe had in disparate teams. Well, actually, how does this all connect? But for me, more importantly, we, we are really dogmatic with our clients about making them bring their entire team on the journey. So we, we start our engagements with what we call the kickoff session. So we, we run typically an online workshop with the whole company where we explain to everyone in the company, what is B Corp, where did it come from? Why is this company want to be a B Corp and what do we hope to get out of it? Because if you, if you nail that piece that, the employee engagement piece, like, without fail, the feedback we get from those kickoff sessions is, oh my gosh, the team are pumped. They're fizzing. They're so excited, you know, even angry Dave and tense Tracy are all over this. Like they've come out of the shells and they just, they're alive all of a sudden. And so yeah, you can really get the team engaged and, and then it's a real Tool because the assessment tool in and of itself is quite a dry online assessment tool which is like filling in a questionnaire, pretty dull and boring if done badly. Engage the team. But then ideally again, how we work is where create a project team, get, get some people from the different departments to come and actually help fill out the questionnaire. And so all of a sudden you let people bring themselves to work and they go, actually, do you know what? I am really concerned about stuff that I see in our community. I'd like to have a look at the community section and I've got some ideas for volunteer days and outreach days. So I think would be really good for us as a company, but would actually also tick some boxes for me and a bunch of people in my team about us doing something genuinely meaningful rather than us all planting trees like we did last year. And no one actually likes planting trees or whatever it was. So it's kind of like a, it's almost like the Simpsons, I guess it's like, you know, jokes within the jokes, you know, wheels within the wheels as to how you use it as a tool to really create change, you know, and relatively quickly.

You've highlighted a number of them as we've worked through the, through the interview so far. But just to remind people, you know, let's say they go through the. What can be quite a, quite, as you say, intrusive exercise to really get under the, under the hood on your business and your processes. What are the long term benefits of becoming a B Corp certified business?

Yeah, to be honest, what aren't the long term benefits? So some data. So B Lab is the organization that Jay, Bart and Andrew set up in 2005, 2006. So B Lab is a nonprofit organization that runs the certification system.

Updates the assessment tool and is kind of responsible for, I guess, lobbying and community building amongst the B Corp. And so every year B Lab globally, as well as the local regional B Labs, collect all this data from the B Corps that are in their community because they just see what we've put in all our assessments and they can aggregate it and go, here we go. So in terms of, like I say, customers, employees, supply chain and finance are increasingly kind of putting people under the spotlight. But some examples from the B Labs impact report. So B Corps are one and a half times more likely to be creating zero waste compared to their non B Corp peer or competitor. So clearly that's a massive environmental win. But I would suggest there's probably also going to be some massive operational savings if you're creating no waste. All of a sudden when you look at. There's some really good data, the UK has actually got some of the best data on the B Corp community in 2018. I don't know if you're familiar with a magazine or a journal called the Grocer, which kind of looks at FMCG products and brands. Anyway, so in 2018 they surveyed all, all 150 UK B Corps. That's worth just pausing on because there's now almost 2000b corps in the UK. So just showing you the rate of growth. So in 2016, 2018 they surveyed all 150B Corps grew at an average rate 28 times faster than GDP. 35 said that they'd attracted new customers since becoming a B Corp. And 48 said that prospective staff had basically come to them with a CV saying I want to come and work for you because you're a B Corp. Some more recent data from I think it was 2020, 2021 UK impact reports, 24% was the average turnover growth rate for a UK B corp compared to 3% for the market. And staff attrition at a UK B corp was on average 10% compared to about 17% for the non B Corp. And then there's my favorite one, which is from the University of Ghent. They did a panel data set study of European B Corps between 2012 and 2018. And as they state, this paper empirically shows that B Corp certification positively impacts turnover growth rates one year pre versus one year post certification. So I've yet to find any evidence and in fact, well, even better than that, in the middle of a global pandemic, 52% of B Corps were hiring more employees. So in 2020, 52% of B Corps hired more employees. 47% had employee growth of more than 15%. So I'm yet to be presented with any data that says B Corp possibly could detriment your business unless you go through the process in a really bad manner and you burn a lot of bridges or something doing it. But in general, the B Corp community and there was similar data found in 2008, 2009, obviously smaller population. But the B Corp community outperformed the market in terms of resiliency post gfc. And I don't have. I'm looking at working with a consulting group here to get this study done. My working theory is though, if you've got great relationships with your customers, with your employees, with your supply chain and your investors and people can see that your existence is actually making the people and planet Better will people kind of want you to be around. Whereas if you are what I would call, you know, big evil bastards Inc. And we are just trying to make as much money as possible and we're happy to lay off staff at a moment's notice and we're pretty, you know, rude in our local community. Community, we might be dumping rubbish, you know, semi legally, you know, we can get away with it. You know, you're generally treating your supply chain, your supply chain badly. Well, you're going to be the first one to go when it's like, oh, okay, we can pay two invoices this month. Which one do we pay? Actually, yeah, those guys are just really not that nice to hang out with. Okay. Hey, Nick, he's a nice guy. So that's my working theories. If you've got better stakeholder relationships and people can see the good that your business is doing, people need you. And that really is the essence of purpose, is, you know, what is your contribution? You know, if people can clearly see that your business is making a genuine contribution to people, planet, society, community, they'll want to come hang out, hang out with you. Whereas if it's like, hey, come and do spreadsheets for us for slightly more than the other people pay to these.

Spreadsheets still, you know, and we know what, the talent and retention and attraction is still one of the biggest challenges for businesses globally. Right. So that could be the thing that makes the difference. As you said earlier on, I think you give a pretty compelling response to the benefits of B Corp. Great. So here are some existing vehicles, those listening, maybe they're not familiar with some of the bigger brands that join the movement. So I wonder if you could bring, bring to life some of those that have already gone through the process.

Yeah, I mean some of the well known ones at the beginning of town would be like your Patagonias, the outdoor clothing company Locitane, the beauty, health and beauty company recently certified, I think Innocent Drinks in the UK is, is a B corp.

Yeah, there's, there's a, you know, it's a real range of companies. And, and for me I, I always say it's, it's more about mindset and intent rather than, you know, a specific industry, sector or size of company. So you know, in this part of the world, earlier, that was earlier this year or late last year, the, the years emerging, we, we recently had Unilever, Australia, New Zealand certified as a B Cor. So that's pretty big. But then, you know, there's me who there's Me and quite a small team here, you know, based in, in Christchurch. So yeah, it's real, a real mix. I'm trying to think of other UK ones off the top of my head. I'm less connected to the UK community.

Eco Union, um, Emma Bridgewater, Ethical Bedding House of Hackney.

Lily's Kitchen. Whether these are ringing any bells, is.

It an expensive process both in terms of time and financial commitment to, to go from non B Corp to B Corp.

So it's, I guess it's, it, it's all relative. So if you're really behaving in a way that is 100, not B corp at the minute, sure. Then clearly there's going to be time, effort, change, resource that you'd have to throw at it. I'd say the majority of companies doing B Corp currently are either very well aligned or pretty well aligned. And it's, we're just kind of squeezing the lemon to, to get you to be that little bit better, to get you across the line, to get you to that 80 out of, out of 200 which is what you need to score on this, on the, that self assessment to then be eligible for certification. So the certification fees are based on a sliding scale deal. So they're pretty reasonable entry level. You're looking at probably a couple of grand for I think under a 2 million pound business. Don't, don't quote me on that. I can get a link to the UK fees.

But yeah, it goes up in pretty small jumps based on your revenue. So it's pretty, it's pretty good. And then in terms of, yeah time and effort, typically what we find is you'd have one person who we would call the king or queen bee who is going to be your lead. Typically we wouldn't, we would see most companies utilizing a headcount already in the team and they, they carve out, you know, this as a special project.

Again, if you're kind of aligned and you're doing some of the stuff and you've, to be honest, the big thing is having the board and senior leadership buy in to be able to make change. We've worked with some larger companies and we, we keep having to bounce up to the board and we have a board meeting and they go round and round for an hour and it's like cool is anyone to make a decision on this? Whereas typically we find that sort of medium sized privately owned company, whether you, where you're talking to the CEO who might be the founder or a family member, you know who gets the business and they've said, yeah, we're going to do this there. So it's like gravy because they can just make a decision on the spot. Yeah. Yep, I love it. That's really cool. Never thought about that. Yeah, let's do that. And then other stuff, they go, yeah, look, we're not so sure about that. I don't feel like we align with that. So I don't want to do that. But at least you know where you stand. So, yeah, in terms of getting through the process, like I say, it's a bit of a piece of string, but that really is the value of engaging someone like myself is typically we either just sit down with a client for a day and do a very intense day of lifting. Going through literally each of the questions one by one to just help them articulate what they're doing and coach them to say, well, look, you're currently doing this, but actually if you get to here, all you'd need to do is do this. And again, if you've got the CEO there and they go, yeah, no, I'm cool with that. Cool. Done. Other companies, it's taken three years because, you know, they were maybe sitting at 30 points and we, you know, we're gonna have to put some strategy and timeline and resource against it. So it really, really is, I call it a piece of string and a concertina in one.

Sure.

Yeah, sure.

Now that you've articulated that really, really clearly, which is great. So I guess last question really is where do you see the future of this going? Like, you know, the rate of growth seems to be phenomenal. You mentioned earlier 150 companies in the first study. By the time you went back, it was over 2,000. And that was in the UK alone, I think. So it's growing exponentially. What do you see the future for? Or how do you see the future for the movement? And why is it really, really important on the back of that for hles to people, professionals listening to. You know what, let's not get left behind. Let's move the needle on this now.

Yeah.

It'S really interesting. So there's plenty of other certification systems out there, but somehow B Corp seems to capture the hearts and minds of people. If you scroll through your LinkedIn feed and see and search by hashtag B Corp or B Corp certified, the number of. I mean, I'm in a bit of a bubble. I see a lot of these posts, but the number of posts that you see where it's like, wow, we're so proud to say that we're B Corp certified. We did this and we had this and we want to really thank our Ops team and Da, da, da, da. Show me Those posts for ISO 14001, which is the ISO sustainability framework. Show me those posts for pretty much any other ESG based framework or, or really any other certification framework. You just don't seem to see them. So there's some, I think there is something innately human in what B Corp is trying to redress by saying, you know.

I guess it was actually.

Rose Macario, she was the former CEO of Patagonia and she's got a great quote. She said, the B Corp movement is one of the most important of our lifetime, built on the simple fact that business impacts and serves more than just shareholders. It has an equal responsibility to the community and to the planet. And I think that really sums up why BCORP just captures people. Because, because people realize that there's more, like I say, it's more than just me turning up doing my spreadsheet or selling as many widgets as I can today. There's more to life than that. So I think B Corp just captured that. It's captured some, some, yeah, deeper human essence that people are really connecting to. And I think it's just now going to become the new way of doing business. I mean in, in certain sectors, if you're in health and beauty, food and beverage, some advertising sectors, marketing, consulting, you know, agency type businesses, pretty soon, if you're not a B Corp, all your competitors will be. So all of a sudden it's going to be table stakes that, you know, this is just how we operate. And so I think there's going to be, over the next few years I kind of just see that, I mean in the UK you guys have updated your Companies act to now for shareholders, directors and owners, they now can choose to consider the impact of their operations on people planning and what have you. So, like the B Corp world makes you say that you will. So you're one word away in your company's act already from you having to think about all this stuff. And you know, I know that B Lab and the B Corp community in the UK are, are, you know, they're lobbying to sort of say, look this, this should just be how business behaves. If you're not, you know, thinking about your impact more broadly than just making money, you're not going to, you know, you're not going to be here for much longer. So yeah, I think, like I say for hr, I think, I think the big challenge like you say is talent recruitment and retention and genuinely connecting to a higher purpose and genuinely authentically going on that journey rather than, you know, I like picking on marketing people and accountants because I used to be in sales and I think sales always have that natural affinity to pick it on the marketing team and the accountants because I'm just really bad with numbers. And so that's purely just projection me being triggered that I'm bad at numbers. But you know, typically we just find a lot of companies go to the marketing team or, or possibly even worse, go to a marketing agency or can you whip us a new purpose statement for us? Great. And we'll bang it out to the team. Pointless. You know, you've got to go and do some soul searching, you know, to actually work out who are we? What do we actually collectively care about as an organization and lead with that, you know, purpose needs to become strategy. And I think that's where HR L&D can play a real role is by, you know, proving that doing good and having people connect to actually wanting to do good and making that, you know, part of maybe the annual review, you know, say, hey, what, what social environment good have you done in your role this year? You know, I think there's a pivotal role that, that they can play to really help companies truly lead with a culture, you know, but, but that's, that's rooted in a true essence rather than, yeah, you know, we, we have a ping pong table and we pay better than they do. You know, I think, I think a.

Lot of what you've said talks to what is the modern employee challenge. Right. If we revert back to something you said earlier in the show, which is you had a bit of a subconscious awakening due to, to both small T and big T traumas that you were going through, you'd look to your realize it didn't align with your own values and you found yourself on this path, becoming a B Corp Consultant. Right. And helping other companies.

Yeah.

Your enthusiasm for the subject comes through. Right. It's really obvious you are now aligned with your values, your principles, your motivations follow.

Right.

And it's really nice hearing the way you talk about the benefits because it's about business, businesses working for purpose and trying to find purpose rather than just operating for profit. Right. But it's not necessarily the expense of profit. You can have both growth, that's the beauty of it. And actually the stats you've quoted suggests that if you do this, actually the profits will even follow in a greater significance.

They did before that's the big irony. Like genuinely, if you just care about making money, you should really look at being a B corp. But if you care about anything else, you should also think about, think about being a B corp.

I've got my own, I'm a CEO of my own firm. We're not B Corp certified at the minute. You've got the wheels turning for me. I'd like to think we do a lot. We're a great place to work. Certified. Great place to work for women as well. We're, we're one of the only companies that offer Planet Positive recruitment solutions. So we will, you know, we do a lot of carbon offsetting for the placements that we make. We try and offset the carbon footprint of a, an employee for one full year for each person we place and we offer various services. I think one of the challenges for us is sometimes the other businesses you work with aren't necessarily that interested in the Planet Positive solutions you can provide. And that's a bit of a lesson for us. It was kind of one of those things that we did and we thought, everyone's going to want this and why wouldn't you want to be. Have a sustainable recruiting process? And actually sometimes it's not always top of their agendas. Right. And that's been a bit of a learning curve for us. But I think you've.

Yep.

You really brought the, the B Corp movement into, into, into the light for me and I really appreciate you joining me on today's show. For those that want to find out more about, you know, where they can either engage your services team or where they can find out more about B Corp's resources, what are some of the links I can direct them to?

Yep. So if you, if you go to our website, Growgood Co, if you want, we've got an ebook which is basically called To Be or Not To Be. The what, why and how B Corp certification. I'll get you a link for that so that you can share that or put it on your, on your link so that you don't have to be spammed by me to sign up for the, you know, the capture thing. Yeah. Come check out the website. Connect with me on LinkedIn. If you just look Tim Jones at BCORP bloke, I'll be on LinkedIn. Yeah. You know, we've got UK clients, we've got US clients, Aussie, Hong Kong. Yeah. We can work anywhere. Yeah. We always happy, just have a conversation and just see if it's the right.

Thing for someone and not to Forget, of course, you're also a very experienced podcast host. You have the Be Better podcast which you can find on AM fm. I'll make sure that the link for your show is on the show notes along with the, the ebook which I believe is, as you said, to be or not to be, the what, why and how of B Corp. It's a definitive guide to B Corp. So that link will also be in the show notes. Just click straight through, you can access that, I believe. There's also a fantastic case study that I located which if you don't mind, Tim, I think which is, is how you helped the amazing humans at Genoa get B Corp and get their purpose.

They were a really good case study actually. So fast growing cosmetics, Nutrition, Health brand.

We were talking with Monique, their CEO and Colleen, their chief operating officer and I said, hey look, you know, it'd be really good if you could get some of the team to come on the journey. She said, yeah, cool. Yeah, we booked all the, you know, all the engagements in. She emailed the whole company, 26 people said, hey look, if you want to come to these sessions, you can, it's, you know, but if you've got something else on, don't stress. The whole company came and went through the entire B Corp assessment as a company. Just what they got out of that was just exponential human growth just to have. They saw so much under the hood and everyone got to really understand how the business works and why Monique had started the business. And yeah, they got, you know, genuine tears going through the process with some of the team when they understood like the depth to what the company was about. So again, like, you know, you don't get that going through ISO. Well normally tears of, oh my gosh, they've asked for another document.

Well, I'll make sure that case study is linked in the show notes as well. So if you listen to this, click on the show Notes, whatever your preferred podcast platform is and you'll be able to find the links to all of those resources I've just mentioned, including links to your Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn profile as well. And of course if you are someone listening to this show, you need support with a recruitment related vacancy in the world of HR or L& D, you can actually access our Planet Positive ESG recruitment solutions. It's called Greenify, so I'll put a link to that as well. Of course I'd love to support you with any recruitment requirements you may have. Do get in touch with either myself or my team@jgarecruitment.com just leaves me to say a final thank you to Tim Jones, the B Corp certified specialist here on today's HR LND podcast. It's been an absolute pleasure, Tim. It's been a whirlwind whistle stop tour and I'm really glad you joined us because it certainly opened my eyes. I hope it's opened the eyes of our listeners as well. Thank you ever so much.

Appreciate it.

Hey, it's Tim here, that B Corp bloke from Grow Good. If you want more content on purpose, B Corp how to do more good in the world as an individual or a business, then you know the drill. Hit the like and subscribe. Check out some of our other videos. They're probably floating around here somewhere. You know how it works. Thank you so much. See you next time.