Let's talk workplace culture for B Corps

We were having one of our usual catchups in the Teamgage office this week and sharing stories from our recent customer meetings.

The subject then turned to B Corps, which are businesses that meet high standards of social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency.

We'd just learned that one of our customers is B Corp certified and rely on Teamgage as their "Cultural Barometer" to help them meet the criteria needed in this area. It's not a use case that we were overly familiar with, so decided to do some digging.

In short, the overarching expectation is that B Corps have a positive workplace culture with meaningful workplace dialogue.

Teamgage provides a flexible, independent way to facilitate that.

Evolving B Corp standards for workplace culture

We know that the B Lab’s standards "define the performance that a company needs to manage and continuously improve upon to achieve and maintain B Corp Certification." However, those standards are evolving, with consultation on the latest set of standards open until March 26, 2024.

“The biggest change to the new standards for most B Corps is a move from the current framework, where companies have flexibility in how to achieve a verified 80-point score, to instead ensuring they meet specific requirements across different impact topics,” a B Lab spokesperson said.

One of those impact topics is Workplace Culture.

No longer a nice to have

It's a message that we've championed for a long time.

A positive workplace culture isn't just a nice-to-have - it's a must-have for companies striving for excellence and impact.

It's why we're so on board with B Corp being as robust as possible with their requirements in this area.

According to Bernard Gouw, B Lab’s Senior Social Standards Manager, one key aspect of meeting their new requirements is to "actively seek worker feedback and consider it when making decisions." ‍

This not only engages and empowers employees, but also nurtures a culture of trust and transparency - a cornerstone of a successful organisation.

Moreover, the new standards emphasise demonstrating behaviors that consider and address worker feedback on pertinent issues, underscoring the importance of meaningful dialogue and action within the workplace.

Questions to consider

Teamgage is built to support those principles, particularly around employee insights and action within specific target areas.

Whenever we start talking to potential customers, our conversation always turns to what set of employee questions might be best. From our experience working with thousands of teams around the world, we know they need to be short, sharp and highly relevant to employees, their teams and/or the organisation's areas of focus.

They're always asked anonymously through our system and on a regular basis, so they can be improved over time.

So as a first step, you might want to consider a handful of employee questions on some of the following B Corp suggested measurements of the worker experience:

• Sense of Satisfaction
• Wellbeing
• Mental Health
• Belonging
• Shared purpose
• Psychological Safety
• Engagement
• Happiness

B Corp provide you with the flexibility to choose which of these you measure and when, with Teamgage making it easy to add and replace questions per team on an ongoing basis. We'd also suggest adding in questions specific to your own areas of focus, your organisation's values or key projects to further engage your people.

On the way to certification

When your employees start to complete their Teamgage submissions, we'll  make those insights and comments available both on a real-time basis and within a timeline, to show evidence of your ongoing action and continuous improvement.

Drilling into any of these areas for themes, specific comments and sentiment analysis couldn't be easier too.

Safe and inclusive

As an independent third party, Teamgage will act as a safe space for your employees to share their thoughts, ideas and insights anonymously at any time, promoting safety and wellbeing - critical components of a healthy workplace culture.

We'll also ensure inclusivity through our user-friendly interface and multi-language support.

Workplace culture data

But what about further analysis on the data? The good news is that we can support the B Corp requirements for larger organisations in this area too.

For example, depending on the user data you provide to us on setup, we can disaggregate your Teamgage results on various self-reported social identities, including gender identity, location and employee tenure.

We can also deploy our Teamgage Surveys tool so you can run an annual Inclusion and Engagement survey for example, to determine the areas of need that would lead to the biggest impact within your organisation.

Let's not just tick the box

We work with teams of all sizes, across a variety of industries, including leading B Corps. We'd love to work with you too!

With Teamgage by your side, achieving excellence in workplace culture, gaining improvement in your own key areas of focus AND B Corp certification has never been more attainable.