All about the new B Corp standards
Dec 20, 2024
What’s happening at B Corp 🤔
The company is changing and evolving!
Fortunately, the B Corp assessment process is evolving too 😎
For years now, B Lab (the non-profit that manages B Corp) has been operating with a questionnaire that requires 80 points out of 200 to obtain certification.
A company can therefore choose the initiatives it wishes to implement to achieve a score of 80 or higher.
To assess larger companies and multinational corporations more effectively and reflect current issues, B Lab has decided to undertake a complete review of its evaluation process.
"Tell me some good news 😍"
It now involves 10 standards to meet rather than a score to achieve.
What are these 10 standards 👀
Basic Requirements 🔍
The company meets the basic B Corp criteria. It is therefore ready to modify its legal documents to include the legal clauses in addition to meeting the eligibility requirements.
Mission and Stakeholder Governance ⚖️
The company ensures that management monitors and takes the necessary steps to improve social and environmental impact. It is also transparent about its social and environmental performance, its goals, and how it engages its stakeholders (employees, suppliers, customers, shareholders).
Corporate Culture 🤝
The company ensures to include employees in decision-making in a concrete and formalized manner. It also makes sure to measure team satisfaction and takes steps to improve it.
Fair Wages 💵
In addition to doing everything necessary to comply with pay equity, the company ensures to pay at least the living wage to its team. It also takes care to raise awareness among its main suppliers so that they do the same with their own team.
Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI) 💙💛
The company takes care to improve its JEDI practices by implementing a clear action plan that is communicated to both internal and external stakeholders.
Human Rights 🫶
The company ensures to eliminate any negative impact on human rights while also ensuring that its main suppliers do the same.
Climate Action 🌎
The company measures its greenhouse gas emissions every year and sets targets based on scientific recommendations to keep global warming below 1.5 °C.
Environmental Management and Circularity ♻️
The company takes the necessary measures to understand its negative impact on the environment and develops a strategy to reduce its carbon footprint. The company also collaborates with its suppliers to achieve its environmental goals.
Public Affairs and Collective Action 🤜🤛
The company collaborates with its stakeholders to increase collective impact on social and/or environmental policy, industry, and/or business community levels.
Complementary Impact Themes 💪
The company improves other important components of the impact of its activities (beyond the main impact themes).
Should I certify myself with the current assessment method or wait?
Is it easier to certify now? For companies with more than 250 employees or an annual revenue of over 75 million, the answer is yes. For other companies, not necessarily.
Although it is still difficult to know what the new questionnaire based on these standards will look like, we can assume that the current questionnaire allows for greater flexibility.
"So should I wait or not? 😅"
If you want to have a clear idea of the evaluation process, start the process now to be certified before the end of 2025 (B Lab mentions the arrival of the new questionnaire at the beginning of 2026).
"Yeah, but I would have liked to certify with the new standards. 😢"
Fortunately, a company must recertify every 3 years to maintain its certification. The recertification process will certainly be conducted with the new standards.
Still have questions about these standards? That’s normal, schedule a time with me so we can discuss it 🙂
Guide written by Thomas, B Corp Consultant (he/him)
