We’re a Best for the World B Corp
Future Super has been awarded Best for the World status by B Corp for 2021. If you’re not familiar with B Corp, it's a global accreditation for sustainable and impactful businesses. You might recognise some other B Corps like Who Gives A Crap, Patagonia, Bank Australia and KeepCup. Although they range across different industries, the thing that all B Corps share is that they balance people and profit as equal priorities. Unlike some award labels that you can slap on any brand, B Corp accreditation is rigorous and awards in five categories of impact: governance, workers, community, customers, and environment.
Future Super managed to be Best for the World in both the Governance and Customers categories for 2021, which is a huge achievement. That means we scored in the top 5% of B Corps worldwide and set a gold standard for organisations using business as a force for good. But what does each of these awards actually mean and how did we get them?
The Customers Impact Area
This measures the value that we create for our direct customers. B Corp checks out our products and services, our marketing, data privacy, security and more. Put simply, are we good for the people who keep our business going? So what have we been doing that’s so good? There’s one obvious answer:
Our super products are game changing for our customers and their impact in contributing to climate solutions and reducing emissions.
It’s something we’re continuing to build on with a focus on making our super options more impactful and cost effective for our members as we grow. We’ve also made recent strides in our approach to transparency and accessibility of information, improving the way people are able to navigate how and where we invest their money.
The Governance Impact Area
This measures our overall commitment to our mission, as well as ethics, accountability and transparency. B Corp checks out our impact reporting, our overall transparency, the integration of social and environmental goals in our employee performance evaluations and stakeholder engagement. Some of the things that we’ve been doing in that space include:
Financial transparency with employees (we share pay gap and employee satisfaction information broken down by gender, seniority and racial categories as well as what we’re doing to address any issues).
Rigorous, independently verified impact reporting on our carbon footprint and supply chains.
Implementing a Whistleblower Policy to guide employee disclosure.
So what’s next?
Well, now that we’ve been awarded Best for the World status, we only want to get better. This recognition is nice validation for the work we do. But we’re setting our sights on doing whatever we can to improve in those other impact areas - especially the environment. This isn’t about winning an award for us, it’s about using our purpose-driven business as a force for good. One of the great things about B Corp is that the qualification provides a roadmap for improvement and ensures companies are legally bound to continue the work they were certified for.
Here’s how we’re planning on doing that:
Our board recently declared a climate emergency and we’re on track to be a net zero business by the end of 2021. Take that 2030! Our operations should be certified by Climate Active this year.
We’ll use B Corp’s Sustainable Development Goals Manager to improve and update our climate action plan and sustainability work, align to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and keep reducing emissions even as our team grows.
We’ll continue improving the diversity of our team and eliminating inequality, bias and discrimination wherever we find it.
We’re diversifying our supply chain, with a focus on lifting engagement with traditionally underrepresented groups and preferencing them as partners, in particular focussing on First Nations suppliers.
We’re doing our bit to reduce inequality through our charitable giving channels, which includes paying the rent by donating 10% of our office rental expense to First Nations organisations.
Source: BCorp Website