Blog.

Cynozure has always been a business that sees our position as more than just selling products and services. A truck load more. 

We’ve always looked to be additive to the world, support the data industry, make our customers successful and provide employment and career progression for our crew. This has seen us set up the CDO Hub, work with charities, partner with data for good organisations, work with purpose-driven businesses, provide a platform for under-represented groups and so much more.  

Earlier this year we took the decision to go beyond ‘doing the right thing because that’s the right thing to do’ and to properly hold ourselves to account by creating a business that meets the high standards of social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency.

A strategy that focuses on using our business as a force for good. 

Why we joined the B Corp movement

To do that we joined the B Corp movement and started working towards B Corp Certification.

Tom Wilson, who is leading the certification initiative wrote about that here. This article covers the 5 main impact areas that give us a framework to measure ourselves and set challenge targets to achieve – People, Community, Customers, Environment and Governance. 

In May we took a huge step forward by changing our company’s Articles of Association to ensure that we balance care and consideration to people, planet, and profit! I wrote about that on LinkedIn here.

Application for the certification

This month, July, we have now officially submitted our application for certification. It’s an extremely rigorous process and the application, which we started prep for early 2022, was no mean feat.

To apply and to be successful you need to reach a score across the 5 impact areas of 80. When we started, we carried out a rough-cut version of the submission and got to a score of 65 which gave us confidence that as a business we were in the ballpark. 

We took the decision not to submit until we were at a score of 90 to allow for some deductions during the review process. Once we completed our application, we got to a score of 107. We don’t expect to stay this high as we move through the assessment stage, but we’re very pleased that the work we do, the people we engage with and our impact on the world is rated highly as we step into this process. 

Improvement plan

While we wait to hear from B Lab (the organisation behind the B Corp movement) on our application, there is loads to be cracking on with. We’ll be preparing for the review, making sure we have our evidence in good shape, engaging and communicating with our team and stakeholders on our plans, getting our internal B Corp team (the B Corp Squad) working towards our improvement plan. 

In terms of that improvement plan, some of the things we will be prioritising include tightening some of our internal policies, running a DEI survey to better understand the diversity of our crew and suppliers, formalise our approach to charitable giving and creating some externally facing assets that make our commitments more transparent externally. 

Using the B Corp certification to help us continue to build a business as a force for good, has been eye opening, challenging, rewarding and importantly impactful. 

I look forward to sharing more about this journey in the coming months.