Why did we set out to become a B Corp? It made sense to us. At Path Financial, we only deal with clients who want their money to make a positive impact. We invest in companies that follow best practices and processes, with low carbon footprints and that strive to reach solutions for both people and planet.
It was less about getting a badge and more about demonstrating that we’re not just advising clients on how to have a more positive impact, but that we’re walking the walk too.
Achieving B Corp status is a must for a firm like Path – it would be quite worrying if we couldn’t achieve it or align ourselves to the premier accreditation. We like to practice what we preach.
In terms of doing the actual registration, it was as simple as going online and doing an assessment without any commitment. The assessment highlighted areas we needed to improve and things we needed to think about, as well as areas we didn’t need to worry about.
We spent a few hours scrolling through the online B Impact Assessment to get an overview of the criteria and to help us understand the areas where we should focus our attention and seek to make improvement, whether that was on our own HR policy or environmental standards. From this starting point we were inspired to complete the full assessment to become an officially recognised B Corp.
We decided to make it a key topic to focus on, as it was important to us that we did it and did it well. The main thing for us was getting a management-level person to execute our B Corp journey, who could oversee everything and really devote themselves to the cause, so as Path’s general manager, Richard spent a lot of time looking at what needed changing, drafted an action plan, and decided whether we could deliver what we did need to change.
We evaluated companies we were working with to make sure they were working in ways that aligned with our values, as well as looking at who is represented across our business – it was really important to us that we were diverse and inclusive, as it is widely known that the finance industry doesn’t have a lot of either.
Being regulated officially by B Corp really helped us, as topics such as governance and due diligence were already part of our process, but they are now even more important – we were doing quite a lot already that made the B Corp journey a bit easier.
Holding ourselves to the highest standards
We rethought our suppliers to make sure we had the most robust options in place. We implemented a green purchasing policy, which is our list of preferred suppliers and sees us typically using other B Corps for anything we outsource. We also had more due diligence around suppliers as a result, especially when it came to going through supplier lists, documenting and comparing them. This way of doing things is slightly more time consuming, but it means we are holding ourselves to the highest standard.
Other areas did take time, especially around diversity and inclusion as we wanted to make sure we got this right.
But we didn't have to change anything about the way we gave advice. As we dived into the B Corp application, we found that we used the most appropriate businesses already as our major suppliers were B Corps too, so we were working in a way that was aligned with what we were advising about.
We keep our environmental footprint as low as possible by using a Zoom-first approach for client meetings, rather than travelling for face-to-face catch ups. This would have been a massive change back in the day, but it is quite normal now. Nobody wanted to meet on Zoom before Covid, so there has been a shift here even if businesses don’t have B Corp status.
Think more
We were operating as a B Corp before we actually became one, so the process was quite smooth for us. People had said it's difficult, but it wasn’t as hard as we expected. It was rather time consuming though.
We have been able to improve and extend our employee benefits as a result of achieving B Corp status, following the staff surveys we carried out. For example, employees now have more flexibility when it comes to how they work, as well as being able to switch their bank holidays to any day of the year, which means employees who may observe different religious holidays can celebrate these without eating into their annual leave. The B Corp journey made us think more and act on improvements to improve our employee experience.
For the most part, our B Corp journey was smooth. But as a service provider, the difficult part was the interpretation of the questions. We found the assessment to be more focussed towards manufacturers than service providers, which meant the questions didn’t always make sense, or apply to us in the same way. This was definitely a challenge for us.
When it came to making commitments for this year, we have found that we have been quite restricted as a small company, because we don’t have massive profits. a lot of big things companies want to do does cost money, and the smaller businesses can’t commit to huge budgets, so this has been a challenge. If employees want certain benefits, such as a gym membership or unlimited holiday, this costs the business – whilst smaller businesses may want to do things to make themselves better, they may find that smaller profits might hold them back, and this is certainly the case when it comes to B Corp too.
We also developed staff surveys to get data points to help us develop and grow as a business, however it is hard for small companies to keep surveys anonymous, and we wanted staff to be truthful and honest, which people may not feel able to be if they think they can be identified.
We also had to start producing an annual impact report, and we found the first one to be quite hard as we had to discuss commitments we had made; however, we might not have achieved some of the targets just yet. As we approach our second impact report, this is something we will place a focus on.
A positive response from clients
Since we became B Corp accredited, a lot has happened. We ended up in the B Corp Best for the World list, which means we rank in the top 5 per cent of all B Corps for our size group. This helped dramatically with other awards and accreditations, such as the Sky Net Zero award, of which we were one of the winners.
Lots of prospective clients decided they only want to work with B Corps, so we have acquired clients that we otherwise may not have done as a result of being B Corp accredited. This in turn keeps us compliant with our B Corp accreditation, as our supply chain and behaviours are influenced by the standards we had to achieve to secure B Corp in the first place – if we did something better than before it would improve our B Corp score, so it enforces high standards and encourages improvement.
Being in the B Corp community also gives us a ready-made market and community, where we can participate in social functions and networking events, which helps to meet like-minded potential clients and partners. Culturally, it's something which is often referenced in staff meetings too. It comes up quite frequently as being one of the cultural pillars of the business. Staff are aware of our commitment to being aligned to a certain way of being.
We’re easier to find now, because being a B Corp comes with a visible, searchable badge, so the accreditation makes Path easier to find. We know that clients who gravitate towards us are looking for B Corp businesses, so it’s a search term that sees more business floating to us, which leads to increased turnover and profit.
In terms of current clients, there’s been a positive response as they are pleased to see Path is a B Corp, but given what we do, it is expected of us. It does reinforce client’s faith in Path as a business, as the vast majority of clients find Path because of what they stand for – ongoing validation is important to them, so it reinforces the strength of client relationships.
We believed we were already doing enough, so B Corp for us was more about extending what we were doing, rather than a complete overhaul.
David Macdonald is founder of Path Financial and Richard Ravelin is general manager of Path Financial
