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People working in a socially responsible company

Moving towards the triple bottom line (TBL) for sustainable companies

Reeha Alder, our Employee Experience Director, is part of the team helping our group to achieve a triple bottom line (TBL) for sustainable companies. She recently attended the B-inspired conference to learn from others with the same goals.

We’re currently embarking on our journey to becoming a triple bottom line sustainable company and an accredited B-Corp Group. Basically this involves reporting results in terms of our social and environmental impact as well as financial returns. It requires a big shift in organisation and mindset.

As part of this, we’ve been working with other B-Corp leaders to help understand how to succeed on this journey and the rewards waiting on the other side. Here’s the key things I learnt from the B-inspired conference:

 

 

We are all in this together

We heard from an incredibly inspiring school student Katiann Barros Rocha. She highlighted the everyday pressures society puts on young people with their stereotypes, gender norms, expectations and more. Katiann said that we are all working against each other rather than together to drive positive change. Instead, we should focus on love, support and togetherness as society to help us move towards more sustainable, inclusive and supportive communities.


Rewire your ownership structure

If you want to drive progress, you have to rewire your organisational structure. Think about how you can give back to the people who create the products you sell and benefit from. Think about how you all gain equally, rather than just those at the top. Sophi Tranchell (CEO Divine Chocolate) talked about how her cocoa farmers held the control of the business through 43% ownership. So those who create the product get to decide about the running of the business and gain the majority of success from their product.


Generational intelligence

This is the first time we are seeing five generations working side by side and, by 2030, our workforce will need to reskill and upskill 8-10 times to stay relevant. So let’s help encourage each generation to teach one another to ensure our entire workforce remains relevant tomorrow.


SWAT teams to help build a learning culture

Nishita Dewan (Ex-Uber Senior Strategist) talked about how scaling businesses can learn from Uber’s SWAT methodology to drive a genuine learning culture. Whenever a mistake is made, a cross-functional SWAT team deeply and rapidly analyses the problem, pulls out the learnings, shares them across all teams and helps move the business forward.


Business as usual is catastrophic

We often get lost in keeping things moving and don’t stop to think about whether our daily activities are making the difference we want for our people, our planet and our business. We can make small environmental changes like using a bamboo toothbrush, or set up unconscious bias training in the business to help move to a more inclusive environment. These small and regular changes together can help us all move towards more sustainable companies in a sustainable, inclusive society. As Greta Thunberg said “Our House is on fire - let’s act on it.”

 

Achieving a triple bottom line is a really big step for organisation. It’s only by working together, changing the way we think and focusing on how we can improve both the big and small things can we get there.

Reeha Alder - Employee Experience Director

Want to know more about our TBL ambition?

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