We are delighted to announce that we are now officially certified as a B Corp.

Firetail was set up to help clients working on the world’s most challenging problems. Our purpose is to help impact-driven organisations realise their ambitions for society.

Certification is an important achievement for us as a business, as a team, and for our clients and partners. As we celebrate joining this movement, we wanted to explain why being B Corp Certified is important to us and how we got here.

What is a B Corp?

B Corporations are businesses that are certified to the highest standards of verified social and environmental performance, public transparency, and legal accountability to balance profit and purpose.

B Corps commit to positively impact all stakeholders – workers, communities, customers, and the planet. 

All B Corps have to sign up to series of principles that state:

·       That we must be the change we seek in the world. 

·       That all business ought to be conducted as if people and place matter. 

·       That, through their products, practices, and profits, businesses should aspire to do no harm and benefit all

·       To do so requires that we act with the understanding that we are each dependent upon another and thus responsible for each other and future generations. 

Why does it matter to us?

Being a B Corp helps us to live our values, and is an important step forward on our own journey to working with purpose.

Firetail has always balanced purpose and profit, and has continuously aimed for social impact, as well as high environmental and social standards. B Corp certification gives us a much clearer framework for measuring our social and environmental performance against our ambitions.

Getting here was tough – and rightly so. The application process is rigorous and we had to go through a lengthy assessment process that looked at every aspect of our business  – from our governance, to our impact on staff, customers, community, and the environment. This was followed by a detailed review and assessment by B Lab staff, with requests for documentation for all key points. We’ve changed our Articles of Association and invested time and effort in new policies and processes. It’s been a huge team effort.

This is an important milestone for us, but not an end in itself. We are now part of a global community that uses business as a force for good. We will continue to learn and improve.

What’s next?

Becoming a B Corp is just the start. We are excited to continue our journey as a sustainable and ethical business – we’ll be using the new B Corp Certified logo with pride but without ever taking it for granted.

Certification demands that companies must “set improvement goals against the most-up-to-date standards and benchmark their performance over time”. This ensures that we are constantly striving to improve and be the best that we can be. We have big plans for the future, including new ways to engage with our clients and partners as we work on our own impact as a team.