What B Corp certification actually means (and what it took to get there)

As of this month, Innatus Digital is a certified B Corporation. It's something I've been working towards since late last year, and now that I'm through the process, I want to be honest about what it involved, because the marketing around B Corp can make it sound either impossibly difficult or like a rubber stamp, and the reality is neither.

B Corp certification is administered by B Lab, a non-profit. The core of it is the B Impact Assessment, a detailed questionnaire covering five areas: governance, workers, community, environment, and customers. You need a minimum score of 80 out of 200 to certify. I scored 83.4, which I'm told is solid for a first assessment, particularly for a small services company. The median score for ordinary businesses taking the assessment is around 50.

What the process looked like

I started the assessment in late 2022. the team and I spent the first month just working through the questions and gathering documentation. The assessment asks for evidence, it's not enough to say you have a flexible working policy, you need to show the policy document. It's not enough to say you consider environmental impact, you need to demonstrate specific practices. For each area, you're choosing from a set of practices at different levels, and higher-level practices require more evidence.

The areas where I scored well were workers (I have proper contracts, flexible working, professional development budgets, and health benefits for a company our size) and environment (my approach to lightweight, performant web builds, green hosting choices, and my own operational footprint). Governance was straightforward, I have a clear mission, transparent finances, and stakeholder input processes. Community and customers required more thought, particularly around measuring our impact on the broader ecosystem.

What it actually changes

Certification requires amending your company's articles of association to legally commit to considering the impact of decisions on all stakeholders, not just shareholders. That's a real legal change, it means the directors have a formal obligation to balance profit with purpose. For a company like ours where that was already the intention, it codifies what we were already doing. But it has teeth: you can't just ignore it without legal consequences.

The annual fee is based on revenue. For a company our size, it's around £800 per year. You recertify every three years, and B Lab has been raising the bar with each cycle, what scores 80 today might not score 80 in three years, which means you need to keep improving.

Was it worth it?

Yes, but not for the reasons you might expect. The badge is nice, and some clients, particularly in the life sciences and sustainability sectors, actively look for B Corp suppliers. But the real value was the process itself. It forced us to document things we'd been doing informally, identify gaps we hadn't noticed, and set specific targets for improvement. Ella drove most of the internal changes, couldn't have done it without her, and the whole team is genuinely proud of the result, and honestly, so am I. It was one of those moments where you step back and think, yes, this is why I started the business.

If you're a small agency or studio considering B Corp, I'd genuinely encourage it. It changed how I think about the business. It's more work than you expect but less work than you fear. Start with the free assessment on bcorporation.net to see where you stand, you might be closer than you think.

Questions about the process? Happy to share more detail, just get in touch.