B Lab has unveiled new standards for B Corp Certification to galvanise business action on the world’s critical social and environmental issues, marking the most significant evolution in the nonprofit’s 19-year history.
As the climate crisis intensifies and societal inequality grows, the standards provide companies with clarity on how they can take meaningful and tangible action on issues facing people and the planet, raising the bar for all businesses, with B Corps “leading the way”. The new standards serve as an open-source blueprint for responsible leaders and are freely available in the B Impact app.
The new standards, B Lab’s seventh iteration, build on the success of the global B Corp movement, driving businesses to scale impact towards shared social and environmental goals. With the B Corp community on the cusp of a significant milestone – a groundswell of almost 10,000 companies across 100 countries, employing nearly one million workers in 160 industries – the potential for positive change across the economy is reaching new heights.
“After engaging with diverse stakeholders through a multi-year consultation process, B Lab is introducing requirements that all B Corps must meet across seven critical Impact Topics and moving away from cumulative point scoring,” said B Lab. “This will create a mandate for B Corps to manage their impact holistically while increasing transparency and clarity for the public.”
B Corps must meet performance standards across seven ‘Impact Topics’:
- Purpose & Stakeholder Governance: Act in accordance with a defined purpose and embed stakeholder governance in decision-making, creating governance structures to monitor purpose, social, and environmental performance.
- Climate Action: Develop an action plan to support limiting global warming to 1.5°C, and, for larger companies, include GHG emissions and validated science-based targets.
- Human Rights: Understand how their operations and value chain may involve negative human rights impacts and take action to prevent and mitigate negative impacts.
- Fair Work: Provide good quality jobs and have positive workplace cultures, implement fair wage practices, and incorporate worker feedback in decision-making.
- Environmental Stewardship & Circularity: Assess their environmental impacts and take meaningful action to minimise them in their operations and value chain.
- Justice, Equity, Diversity & Inclusion: Foster inclusive and diverse workplaces, and contribute meaningfully to just and equitable communities.
- Government Affairs & Collective Action: Engage in collective efforts to drive systemic change, advocate for policies that create positive social and environmental outcomes, and, for the largest companies, publicly share their country-by-country tax reports.
As businesses face increasing regulatory complexity and mounting pressure to retreat from climate and social justice initiatives, B Lab’s new standards provide a clear path for sustained commitment.
“Recognising the pressures businesses face today, they incorporate data and methodologies from other certification schemes, sustainability-related frameworks, and disclosure reporting – including GRI, SBTi, and Fairtrade – enabling companies to focus on what matters: operating for the benefit of all stakeholders.”
While B Corp Certification affirms that a business meets high standards of social and environmental performance, the commitment to progress doesn’t end there.
“Continuous improvement is a cornerstone of the new B Corp standards; businesses must demonstrate impact improvement over time, including milestones after three years and five years, empowering leaders to continue driving meaningful progress throughout their journey as a B Corp.”
“For the last 20 years B Corps have been leaders globally in demonstrating you can be sustainable, ethical and profitable,” says Andrew Davies, CEO of B Lab AANZ. “The new standards are more than an update – they mark a complete reimagining of business impact to meet the challenges of our time. After four years, two public consultations, and more than 26,000 pieces of feedback from businesses, the public, and experts, we’re confident that the new standards are clear, ambitious, and capable of raising the bar for businesses worldwide.
“B Lab’s standards provide a powerful framework to model what good business looks like, offering a comprehensive blueprint for companies to transform the global economy that prioritises people and planet, alongside profit. At their core, the new standards support businesses to measure what matters and accelerate the positive change our world needs now more than ever.”
