In a world grappling with challenges that affect both private life and the workplace, such as climate change, conflicts, racism, discrimination, and injustice, there’s a growing global movement that aims to transform the way we do business. This B-Corporation movement started back in 2006 and is gaining remarkable traction worldwide in recent years.
Today, there are thousands of active B Corp-certified organizations spread across multiple countries. Back in 2021, when we started our B Corp journey, there were around 3600 B Corps in 70 countries, now there are almost 7200 B Corps across 93 countries, employing a total of 645,000 people, and growing!
This growth is a testimony to how an increasing number of people have changed their attitudes towards work and the workplace. According to a recent study by McKinsey & Company, purpose, work-life balance, and professional development are prevailing motivators for people in the workplace in 2023.
At the same time, leadership models are evolving too, with a greater emphasis on flexibility and adaptability. With more stakeholders finding a voice in measuring a company’s performance, and investors broadening their performance criteria to environmental and social impact as well, the companies of the future need to be aligned with both the changing demands of the new generation talent employed by them, and the way their impact is measured externally. Thus, agility, resilience, and continued learning are the new rules to adapt to the increasing speed of everything around us.
Building our company almost simultaneously with starting our B Corp application, made it possible for us to use the assessment as a blueprint for what kind of organization we aspire to be, and to incorporate the right policies and practices from the get-go. We are building on that this year, translating certain unwritten rules or common practices into clearly formulated written statements.
Our purpose as a company is to drive change in maritime logistics, by supporting businesses in their digitalization journey with the sole aim of reducing emissions and accelerating the shipping industry’s decarbonization agenda.
Helping others to reduce emissions also means taking a critical look at our own backyard, where can we contribute or do better?
B Corp & Improvement plans
We achieved the B Corp Certification in 2023, with the following scores:
With the B Corp stamp of approval in hand in March of this year, we were proud of what we had achieved so far, and certainly on the right path, yet very aware that we are far from done, and there is room for improvements to be made on an ongoing basis, in all parts of our business.
Back to our own internal plans. What have we done so far in 2023, to improve our B Corp performance?
- This year we have developed and launched EmissionInsider, a new product in our portfolio aimed at enabling ports to build a path to zero emissions, by analyzing, evaluating, and implementing the right steps towards their decarbonization targets. With rising environmental regulations in Europe and across the globe, ports can make targeted decisions to become net zero by or around 2050, in line with the IMO targets.
- We have taken a critical look at the way we commute & travel for business. Our team commutes almost entirely by public transportation, foot or bike, and by adopting hybrid working, a lot of commuting is avoided, at the same time contributing to a better work-life balance. We have rediscovered train travel as an easy and comfortable way to travel through Europe, and only buy plane tickets when this is the only option. We aim to compensate 100% of all our travel by the end of this year.
- We encourage our team to participate in health & wellness activities during the work week and have recently re-started our Team Fit Challenges (in Map My Fitness App), an easy way to work out on an individual basis, mapping it against your colleagues’ efforts. We plan to continue this on an ongoing basis, striving to engage even more of our team members to join.
- We work with an amazing and skilled group of people, and to build on their personal development, as of June this year we have been able to implement and offer a non-career specific learning & development platform (GoodHabitz), offering a wide array of assessments and training courses, varying from behavioral and health counseling, to languages, safety, and leadership.
- As a way of reaching out to like-minded companies in the global community, we are offering a discount to any eligible B Corp that is subscribing to any of the modules within our Digitization Platform.
We are proud of the progress we have made so far, and throughout this year, we will be actively looking for ways to improve our way of working, processes, and how we can contribute to our customer’s success, our employee experience, and ways to help the community around us.
Stay tuned for our next communications on our B Corp Journey!
