5 B Corp Practices all Small Businesses can Easily Implement

Applying B Corp practices can make any small business more efficient, creative, durable and profitable.

The earliest days of any entrepreneurial venture are fraught with mistakes, misjudgements and often a lack of guidance.

Driven by a passion for their product or craft, and fuelled by their desire to share it with the world, the newbie entrepreneur throws themselves with full gusto into behaviours which, on the face of it, could seem to make sense — ranging from the need to know about every little thing that goes on in their business, to holding the belief that their new product must be perfect before launch, to believing the mantra often repeated by the inexperienced entrepreneur that if “a job is worth doing, then they should do it themselves”.

These practices cost little or no money to implement, can significantly improve revenue and profits, are environmentally and ethically responsible, and are often a lot easier to integrate into a fledgling business’ structure from the very beginning rather than attempting to shoehorn in the changes down the road when habits and company culture have already set in.

This section of the B Corp framework identifies what the company does to enhance its policies and practices pertaining to its mission, ethics, accountability and transparency.

A common mistake of new entrepreneurs is to treat the company mission statement as just a quote at the beginning of their business plan with little or no meaning or relevance, or worse yet, to not have one at all.

The B Corp framework places strong emphasis on the importance of the company mission, and while prospective B Corps can earn points towards their certification for having commitments in its mission to social or environmental impact, or if they serve target beneficiary groups in need, this section is a good reminder to any entrepreneur that a strong mission, especially one that incorporates purpose, is an incredibly valuable tool.

A company mission statement will determine company direction, and it is direction, not intention, that determines destination. Missions provide a template for strategy and decision-making as well as being an essential basis for alignment among the company’s stakeholders — owner, investors, community, suppliers, customers and staff.

A strong, actionable mission directly encourages the entrepreneur to create a mindset of working ON their business rather than IN it, and every minute spent working on tasks that can be delegated is a minute that is not spent planning, strategising and building the best business possible.

This section of the B Corp framework identifies what the company does to contribute to its employees’ financial, physical, professional, and social well-being.

“If a job is worth doing, do it yourself”

Just no.

One of the most common mistakes many entrepreneurs make is to believe they can do it all by themselves. While an entrepreneur very well may be able to do almost everything, they will inevitably do almost everything poorly, or at least, not as well as someone specialised in the area in question.

An entrepreneur is just like any other person, and they will have a handful of natural talents, strengths and weaknesses. One of the very best things that any budding entrepreneur can do, as early as possible, is to identify their own strengths and weaknesses, focus on their strengths to the best of their abilities and then surround themselves with people who will complement their weaknesses and then treat those people as well as they can.

This is an area where the B Corp principles really excel by providing an extremely simple framework on how to attract, retain, encourage and motivate staff. By following B Corp guidance and providing employees with a living wage (as opposed to a minimum wage) and access to benefits such as healthcare, flexible working, further education and career development, you will inevitably encourage staff loyalty and retention and the costs of attracting, recruiting and training new staff always considerably outweighs the costs of retaining existing staff.

This section of the B Corp framework identifies what the company does to contribute to the economic and social well-being of the communities in which it operates.

A key philosophy of the community section of the B Corp movement is a focus on diversion, equity and inclusion, and the tangible benefits for a business that can be brought about by implementing an awareness and understanding of this topic are staggering.

I set up a business myself in my late 20s. I am a white, straight, nondisabled, middle-class male with progressive, lefty, liberal views. When I was gathering together a team of shareholders and management for my new business, I was simply looking to find people from my network and friendship groups who were interested in the product that I was creating, who were aligned with my values, and had a skill that could contribute to the team.

The result of my sourcing my team from my own limited network meant that, albeit entirely unintentionally, I gathered together a group where everybody involved was, also, a white, straight, nondisabled, middle-class, progressive, lefty, liberal male in their late 20s. I say this was unintentional. It absolutely was. In fact, I’m embarrassed to say I didn’t even once notice or consider our exceptional lack of diversity until several years later when I discovered B Corps and started my education on diversity within organisations. Prior to this, I thought I had simply set up a business with my friends and hadn’t given it a second thought.

Anyway, we worked hard and did a good job, we created an awesome product and a loyal following, but can you guess who the majority of our loyal customers were?

You guessed it: predominantly white, straight, nondisabled, majority male, middle-class, progressive, lefty liberals, usually around the same age as us.

While there are some benefits of being tightly aligned with your target market, the benefits that come from a diverse workplace can be far greater across the board, including, but not limited to:-

This section of the B Corp framework identifies what the company can do to improve its overall environmental stewardship.

Long before our worlds were turned upside down by COVID-19 and everybody was forced to get acquainted quickly with Zoom and their ad-hoc home office, the B Corp movement recognised and promoted the importance of an organisation with a location-fluid workforce.

So, an environmental no-brainer, right? But what about the tangible benefits to the company?

Under non-COVID circumstances, teleworking can benefit a company greatly by increasing happiness & reducing stress of workers and increasing sales opportunities in new markets but the primary savings for the company come from increased productivity, lower real estate costs, reduced absenteeism and turnover, and better disaster preparedness, and a typical employer could save an average of $11,000 per half-time telecommuter per year.

In addition, employees would save between $2,500 and $4,000 of their own money per year by working at home half the time. Those savings are primarily due to reduced costs for travel, parking, and food and are net of additional energy costs and home food costs.

Incorporating remote working into the culture of your company is really a win-win all round, but it doesn’t just have to apply to your staff. Apply the same virtual-meeting practices to your accountant, your banker, your lawyer, your consultants, your social media intern, just about anybody, and watch your bank balance increase and your emissions decrease.

This section of the B Corp framework identifies what a company can do to improve the value that it creates for its direct customers and the consumers of its products or services.

The common misconception among new entrepreneurs that ‘a product should be perfect before being launched’ could very well set a precedent which could destine a small business to failure, and that is undermining the importance of the feedback loop from its customers.

When a business is launching a new product or service, it wants to impress its audience. Naturally any entrepreneur needs to do the best with what they have and take pride in their work, but, having said that, a product or service absolutely should be launched before it’s perfect simply because an entrepreneur cannot really know what a perfect product or service looks like until they get it in front of their target audience and hear what they have to say.

Again, B Corp practices shine here, specifically ‘creating and ensuring value for customers by monitoring customer feedback and satisfaction’. This is nothing short of an essential business practice, yet is something that so many business first-timers skirt over and just assume that because they love their product then everyone else will too. This approach has lead many a small business down the road to failure.

There are fewer better habits to get into as a small business owner than to get into a continuous feedback loop with their customers. By asking for a customers views the business owner is showing the customer that they are valued, the feedback will hone and improve the product or service, the customers experience will be greatly improved which will lead to improved customer retention and the job of entrepreneur becomes much easier because the customer is guiding decisions.

These are just a small selection of lessons from the principles of B Corporations that can be applied by any small business owner which will improve the operations, efficiency and profits of their company, and with relatively minimum effort the business will also have improved its social and environmental performance.

It is time to truly dispel the myth that there needs to be a trade-off or choice between profitability and creating positive change in business, regardless of the size or age of a business, and by being ‘better’, any small business owner will see not just better staff, a better community and a better planet, but a better bank balance too.

Matt Deasy is a qualified B Leader with the B Corp movement. He holds professional certificates in Sustainable Business Strategy from Harvard Business School and Social Enterprise from the University of Oxford.

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