I joined financial services in 1996 as a ’20 something’ year old woman. It was a different world. But not all of it was bad: some of it was good. A lot has changed since then but, in my opinion, the industry still has some way to go to be what it needs and deserves to be.
I’ve always tried to run Bespoke ethically, responsibly and in tune with what I believe are the right set of principles. I genuinely believe that being a good business is good business, and good businesses benefit everyone: clients, suppliers, our people, our partners, stakeholders and our planet.
Before our application to become a B Corp, we’d already set firm foundations and had always tried to ‘do our best’ but I wanted to take things a step further - by showing how much ‘doing things properly’ meant to us by being able to evidence our commitment to being more than just a profitable business.
I wanted our clients to know that their interests and our interests were totally aligned and for our people to feel their development and wellbeing was the backbone of our success.
I wanted our partners, suppliers and associates to feel confident in their dealings with us and for responsibility and sustainability to form part of our every day.
B Corp certification enshrines this in our business, providing a ‘mark of trust’ that we’re doing business in a way that meets rigorous standards of social and environmental performance, transparency and accountability. I like that.
Our journey to B Corp
B Corp certification addresses the entirety of a business’ operations. It covers five key impact areas:
- Governance: Code of ethics, financial information disclosure, whistleblower policy, mission and engagement.
- Workers: Career development, health, wellness & safety, tracking satisfaction and engagement.
- Environment: Environmental management system, recycling different materials, water and energy usage, air and climate.
- Community: Civic engagement & giving, diversity, equity & inclusion and supply chain management.
- Customers: Customer feedback or complaint mechanisms, regularly monitoring customer outcomes and wellbeing.
We started talking about becoming a B Corp in October 2020. Our first step was getting an initial B Corp score. We wanted a starting point.
We got to work. We began by measuring our entire company’s performance from the supply chain, policies and procedures, carbon footprint, diversity and inclusion policies, charitable work, corporate governance and all communications to understand where our business was. We identified how we could improve and deliver a more positive impact for the future.
This was a big job in itself but it allowed us to look critically at everything we were doing across all areas of the business and not simply at regulation; and, ironically, the recent consumer duty rules have a lot of similarity to the customer journey expectations of being a B Corp.
We then took stock. We looked at how we could improve our initial B Corp score and meet the required minimum starting score. We looked at what we did well, what we could improve on, where our gaps were. All of it.
We considered where we could improve on key aspects for everyone. How could we become better? Examples included how we supported and looked after our staff. We became a Real Living Wage employer. We already ran an apprenticeship program, but we extended the training and education support to all staff. We also looked at how we could better support our local community through job opportunities, volunteer days and sponsorship.
