Performance Requirements Review Update: April 2021

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27 April 2021 — In December 2020, B Lab announced a review of the performance requirements for B Corp certification in response to feedback on the evolving conception of leadership in social and environmental performance and the opportunity to optimize the impact of the B Corp movement to achieve a vision of an inclusive, equitable, and regenerative economic system. Attached with this announcement was a survey to gather early community feedback on the idea of taking action on specific environmental and social issues and identify some of these issues and key considerations for the B Corp Certification standards. 

A huge thanks to everyone who participated in the survey and shared their valuable inputs with us! We are pleased to share that the survey had almost 1,000 responses from across the globe. In March 2021, the findings from this survey were shared with B Lab’s independent Standards Advisory Council (an independent multi-stakeholder council that is responsible for overseeing the overall certification requirements and standards for B Corp Certification) to seek their feedback and guidance on next steps. Some of the key findings from the survey were as follows

• Results indicate that there is a broad mandate across stakeholders and regions to move forward with continuing to explore the possibility of specific minimum requirements as a component of the performance requirements for B Corp Certification.

• Justice, equity, diversity and inclusion, living wages, anti-corruption & ethics, human rights and worker engagement & satisfaction were some of the topics that were perceived by survey respondents to be important for all businesses to be taking action on, while issues such as supply chain management, water sustainability & waste management were perceived as important for some businesses, but not all, to be taking action on. 

• Among the many different overall considerations to be taken in the standards, respondents highly valued clarity,  continuous improvement, and comprehensiveness in social and environmental performance

To learn more about the findings from the survey and their analyses, please access the full report here (available only in English).

The results and conclusions of this survey are not taken to be definitive, and are instead being used to inform next steps for continued development and stakeholder engagement. Specifically, next steps include the expansion of B Lab’s Regional Standards Advisory Groups (groups of regional experts that provide feedback on the overall certification requirements and standards for B Corp Certification) and conducting a series of workshops to further explore and expand upon the topics covered in the previous survey. A tentative overall timeline for potential future development is shared below, but is subject to change as B Lab continues gathering inputs and new insights. During each phase, there will be invitations and opportunities to participate and provide feedback.

If you’d like to signal your ongoing interest in participating in our standards development, were unable to participate in the first survey or would just like to provide your ongoing feedback on the performance requirements for B Corp Certification as well as the B Impact Assessment, please do so using this survey (available only in English). In addition to submitting your responses to the ongoing survey, we always invite you to reach out to  standardsmanagement@bcorporation.net with questions, ideas, or concerns. See our Knowledge Base article for FAQs about this ongoing process.

Thank you for joining us in the ongoing journey to transform the global economy to benefit all people, communities, and the planet.