Why the B Corp certification deserves to be more widely known

OpenClassrooms has recently been granted the B Corp certification. But when I speak about it to people around me, I often meet with incredulous or even disinterested stares. B Corp does not seem to be well-known by the general public. 

Yet, after seeing first-hand what the B Corp certification entails, I am now truly convinced of one thing: B Corp deserves to be more widely known. In my opinion, this certification represents most of what many people expect from a company nowadays. As there has been so much greenwashing, social-washing and now mission-washing, a little skepticism is to be expected. But B Corp really means business. Here’s why.  

The B Corp certification

The purpose of the B Corp certification is to “assess how a company’s operations and business model impacts its workers, community, environment, and customers, and to measure its entire social and environmental performance.”

These are no mere words. B Corp is a demanding international certification. The application form – the B Impact Assessment, which is freely available to everyone – includes more than 200 questions. It will take you less than one hour to have a first overview, but in the end, you will need several hours to have the final result: your company’s score. 

The questions are divided into several sections: 

• Governance: how the company is managed
• Workers: how the company deals with its team members
• Community: what is the company’s impact on society
• Environment: what is the company’s impact on the environment
• Customers: how the company creates value for its customers

Here is a glimpse at some questions to prove how in-depth they are:

All these questions allow for a total of 200 points. Nobody actually reaches 200 points:

• “Ordinary” companies have an average score of about 50.
• To become B Corp certified, you need to have a minimum of 80 points.
• OpenClassrooms scored 101.2 on its first application, which is quite good, but, of course, can still be improved.
• A few exceptional companies manage to reach 130, or even 150. 

Answering all the questions is not enough to be certified. You need to take a real exam to prove your answers. An examiner will request proof of what you claim (this is the first stage of the process that is charged).

In this example, the examiner asked us for proof of our breastfeeding policy.

The final score is then confirmed by the examiner and published online. OpenClassrooms’s score, for instance, is available here. OpenClassrooms’s officially certified score is available online.

The story does not end here. The score is valid for 3 years, after which one needs to complete the form all over again. 

The true objective is to improve ourselves: in truth, B Corp is a process of continuous improvement, not just a certification. At OpenClassrooms, we have already started small working groups to identify how we can do better… and get a better score next time. 

Finally, B Corp is also a network of companies that will generally want to work together. The most internationally known companies include Patagonia and Ben&Jerry’s; in France, B Corporations include Camif, Welcome to the jungle, Nature&Découvertes… and even Citizen Capital, an investment company that invested, for instance, in… OpenClassrooms. What a small world.

Thanks to Karine Le Moigne for her help with the translation