Ethical Business Blog: James Brown

An Ethical Case: Comtec’s B Corp Journey

Having worked at Comtec for over 11 years, it’s always been clear to me that Comtec is a company that operates with integrity and honesty.

In keeping with these values, in 2022, we were delighted to become the first UK translation company to achieve B Corp certification and join the 5,000-strong global B Corp business community.

While we weren’t just attaching ourselves to the latest trend, it made good business sense to be officially aligned with the B Corp message for our team and clients. There is a growing movement for the corporate world to operate in a more holistic, people and planet-centred way, and that’s what B Corp’s vision is all about.

During the certification process, it quickly became apparent that Comtec were already doing most of what was required to meet B Corp’s expectations. Nonetheless, we identified a number of key areas to improve further, including:

• An annual team survey is looking at the demographics of our business.
• Quarterly pulse surveys ahead of our quarterly performance reviews.
• Additional opportunities to engage our community of freelance linguists.
• Measuring and offsetting our carbon footprint.

Since achieving certification, our team have been galvanised to not rest on our laurels and always push forward to do better and make more changes.

To achieve this, we’ve established internal working groups focussing on a range of key areas:

• Diversity and Inclusion
• Environment
• Team Culture and Wellbeing
• Customers
• Linguists
• Charity and Community

Some of the initial successes of these working groups have included:

• Revising our Customer Service Feedback Process
• Reviewing and altering our staff benefits programme
• Creating a policy around the use of pronouns within the business
• Organising internal celebrations for International Women’s Week and Pride Month.

At the time of writing, we’re one of only two B Corp companies in the UK, along with the lovely folks at AJT. My big takeaway from our B Corp journey thus far has been that regardless of business size, time and money, it’s easy to be an ethical and sustainable business.

I’m excited to speak with Anja Jones at the ATC-EUATC Ethical Business Summit on 21 September and share more about our B Corp journey and how to achieve quick wins while implementing long-term change.

See you all in London!

About the author

B Corp certified Comtec Translation’s Head of Commercial James Brown gets excited about diversity every single day. ATC Council Member and the chair of the D&I Leadership Council at the Agency Hackers community, James is also active with DEI in the Content Marketing Association.