Why work for a B Corp

• Meet Paul and learn more about his role. 
• Why do you work for a B Corp?
• What does social responsibility mean at Kin + Carta?
• What is B Corp certification?
• How are employees involved in Kin + Carta’s responsible business journey?
• What is it like to work for a socially responsible company?
• How did Kin + Carta become B Corp certified?
• What’s next for Kin + Carta’s social responsibility journey?

I’m Kin + Carta’s Responsible Business Lead. This means that I am accountable for identifying ways to deliver profitable outcomes for clients that simultaneously benefit society and the environment. 

Sustainability has always been something of importance to me. In the past, it’s what led me to pursue a career in social entrepreneurship, creating and launching my own company for repurposed bow ties. Since joining Kin + Carta in 2019, I’ve been a part of our responsible business journey with a specific eagerness to improve how we create more sustainable strategies for our internal employees and external clients alike.

I work for a B Corp because it’s really rewarding. Mostly, for the fact that, in a lot of ways, I can explore how to live out my values through my work. Our organization really is interested in answering the difficult questions and doing business like it hasn't been done before and, to me, that's really exciting.

Corporate social responsibility has always been important at Kin + Carta, but a little over three years ago a few employees came together and pitched B Corp accreditation to our executive leadership team. They knew that measuring progress is what’s required to truly be successful in anything. From there, Kin + Carta began its journey to becoming an externally recognized triple-bottom-line business. For us, social responsibility means we’re continuously evaluating how we strike the balance between people, planet, and profit. We’re a company on a journey to become more socially responsible, by way of B Corp certification.

B Corp certification is a widely recognized global accreditation for responsible businesses. It requires an independent evaluation of business through an in-depth review that leaves no stone unturned. This ensures that the business can learn. It’s also a quantifiable certification that exposes impact to social and environmental equity. Once certified, a company must re-certify every three years.

At Kin + Carta, we chose this certification because it was a clear way to validate and confirm that we are continuing to live our values.

Kin + Carta’s responsible business journey is nothing without the sum of its global employee involvement. B Corp certification has brought with it opportunities for all Kin + Carta employees to get involved and make a direct impact on building a world that works better for everyone. 

The world is just starting to understand the carbon and environmental impact of digital products, and our employees get to work with our clients to make incremental, positive change in these areas. 

Our efforts go above and beyond consulting — allowing every individual who works with us to truly think about the changes that they are driving within systems in the world. This way of thinking isn’t possible at companies that are not committed to balancing profit with people and the planet.

Take, for example, the work we’re doing with one of our largest clients — a Fortune 500 financial services company in the United States. We’re at the forefront in driving modernization through Cloud Native Development, with one project team using ReactNative to build new features into the company’s mobile banking app. Each employee is empowered to consider the bias in their code or the accessibility of the features they are creating, then make the appropriate adjustments to limit such bias and improve accessibility.

Employees of Kin + Carta have an incredible role to play within the larger client systems they are a part of — implementing incremental, responsible and sustainable changes in every project being delivered.

It’s extremely rewarding to work for a company that is committed to social responsibility, as it allows me to explore how I live out my own personal values in the workplace. Kin + Carta publicly declaring its commitment to a balance of people, profit, and planet has created the space for questions that are not commonly welcomed at other companies. Questions like: How can this grocery store mobile app be more accessible? Is there a way to ensure that the cloud platform we are building upon is efficiently saving carbon? Has bias or inclusive design been considered enough for this specific product? Are our deliverables for this client building a world that works better for everyone?  

When the hard questions are raised across Kin + Carta, they receive intentional thought and prioritization. As an employee, I’ve seen firsthand that Kin + Carta is invested in being a business unlike any other.

At the end of 2021, Kin + Carta became the first certified B Corp on the London Stock Exchange. This was an incredible moment in history to be a part of, and one that meant a lot to all of us, globally. This was no easy feat; it took three years of hard work. We implemented processes, policies, and strategies such as:

• Putting in place national charity partners to improve and extend our philanthropic efforts
• Analyzing the gender pay gap, actioning upon insights, and setting up the process to do so on an ongoing basis
• Bi-annual global engagement and diversity employee survey as part of a new, comprehensive Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Awareness (IDEA) program
• Defining our flexible working policy
• Introducing net-zero carbon and zero-waste to landfill targets
• Developing and delivering new ways of working on positive impact projects for clients
• Evaluating how we quantify the social and environmental risks of the work we do for clients

The journey is one that will continue to require effort and involvement across every corner of our business.

Certification, for us, was just the start, or “basecamp” as our CEO declared. We’ll be integrating responsibility into all of our service lines by the end of this year, meaning that we’re auditing our offerings and guaranteeing that they are mindful of accessibility, reducing bias in our algorithms, and making sure that we're building solutions in a way that is as efficient and green as possible. We will also be looking specifically at carbon-saving for our clients, seeking to pioneer the effort in consulting across different modernization and innovation activities, which is really cool. From there, we’ll be embedding forms of measurement and accountability so that responsibility is not only processed, but scalable.