What happens after you've become B Corp certified? | Liz Carter of Cripps
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▬ Contents of this video ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
0:00 (welcome)
0:24 (What happens after you've become B Corp?)
1:09 (working with the operations team to embed B Corp into everyday practices)
2:05 (certification is just the start)
3:24 (working with internal communications)
4:26 (stakeholder engagement is key to continued improvement and success)
6:17 (thank you and where to find more information)
▬ Video Transcript ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
Katie Nuttall [00:00:00]:
Welcome to Unwrapped, the B Corp spotlight series where we invite people from B Corp brands to answer some of the most frequently asked B Corp questions. I'm Katie, your host and today I'm pleased to welcome Liz Carter from Cripps. It's great to have you here Liz.
Liz Carter [00:00:17]:
Thank you for having me
Katie Nuttall [00:00:18]:
Okay, so Liz, you have kindly volunteered today to answer the question what happens after you become a B Corp?
Liz Carter [00:00:27]:
It is all very exciting and a little bit scary. So after the 18 months we had of completing our impact assessment, it suddenly became very real. It was initially very exciting, and I felt that it was time for the fun just to begin. It'd been very much sat in a sort of compliance space doing the assessments, and now we've been a Bcorp just for a few months. We're looking at how we integrate that into our day to day operations. So we're a law firm. We've got 500 people. We're one of the biggest law firms in, the country to have the Bcorp certification.
Liz Carter [00:01:09]:
So I've been working very hard with our operations team to look at how we think about our net zero commitments, our supply chain, and our commute to work. That's a big area. But also how we think about reporting as well. So integrated ESD reporting is going to be a real challenge for us where we look at how we, report on our people, and our social impact as well as our financial sort of triple bottom line. So that's a big challenge for us. On the community side, I have found it almost overwhelming in a non competitive environment to, our sector, in a non competitive environment to actually enhance our impact as a sector. So I'm really excited about about that.
Katie Nuttall [00:02:06]:
So a lot of people talk about the process of becoming certified, which in in and of itself is a huge amount of time and effort and work. Your answer has sort of brought to light, actually, the fact that that's just the start, isn't it? There's there's absolutely that moment of excitement and celebration, as there should be, and then it's what happens next. And it it's absolutely that becoming part of the community, you get the chance then to look around you and see what else you can do. Has that been your experience?
Liz Carter [00:02:50]:
Yes, I think it's about, there was an American activist called Maya Angelou and she said once you know better, you do better. And the impact assessment felt like holding up a mirror to our organisation, so we knew where we could start. I think now the sort of process of handing some of the vision over into the practical reality of how we operate a business is is a big challenge because everyone's gonna feel a bit differently about people or not know anything really about it, especially in an organisation of our size. So I've been working in internal communications to help engage people on what does B Corp mean to you.
So we did a video when we launched and, went across a few of the leadership team really and the partners in our business to talk about what did B Corp mean to them. And it was people who'd been involved in the process or knew something about it. This B Corp month, I've gone way more broadly to the, teams to say, just give me one word. How are you feeling about B Corp? And, to release to release that message as well and sort of liberate it so people can bring their own their own experiences to it and their own characters to it.
Liz Carter [00:04:01]:
It's gonna mean something different depending where you sit in the business or depending how you feel about responsible business and society. So I think it's, yeah, it's a process of continuing to communicate in a consistent way to engage people on their terms, to think about what their purpose is at work and bring meaning to to be equal for each individual. And that's an ongoing process.
Katie Nuttall [00:04:26]:
Yeah. That's that's really interesting, and I'm glad you've talked about that actually, Liz. It's it's it's that stakeholder piece, isn't it? And in order to then sort of grow your own impact in relation to becoming B Corp, a sort of worker engagement is key, certainly for an organisation as you save your size.
Liz Carter [00:04:50]:
I think we're always learning. It's a learning process and it's about working together so we're not stuck in our sort of silos. And part of my role is to, and the impact assessment has enabled us to do this, to start to connect the dots between finance and operations and people and our legal service and to see, you know, we've got 4 pillars of purpose which we had before we started our B Corp assessment which are people, clients, planet and community. So we have a purpose statement which is to be the difference, to make a difference across all those 4 areas and that's built into our brand. So to develop the value of that and the trust in our brand, we channel our efforts through those 4 pillars and to find the kind of inter dependencies between them. It's so easy just to take 1 in isolation and it's so easy to approach your job in isolation as I am in the business development team or I am in the people team. There's so much opportunity with B Corp to start to just see the whole structure and to work together towards a shared goal. So I think it's about finding those opportunities to to tell the story between how climate for example is actually how planet is actually a people story and it's all about bringing everybody with us, to make the difference.
Katie Nuttall [00:06:17]:
That's a fantastic answer. Thank you so much, Liz. It's been a real pleasure having you join us today in this series and for those of you who are watching and want to find out more about Cripps, you'll find all the details and the links that you need below. And, of course, if you enjoyed this video please do remember to like, share, subscribe and most importantly go and explore the rest of the series. Thank you again for joining us today, Liz.
Liz Carter [00:06:42]:
No, it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for asking me such great questions.
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