Kickstarting our B Corp month celebrations, we recently launched our first-ever face-to-face ‘B The Change’ event. Reflection, ideation and teamwork were the main themes of the day. Together we sat down as a group to identify our B Corp commitments for 2024, allowing ourselves some time to look back on what we’ve already achieved, highlighting areas that we’ll continue to push and areas that need developing.
On the day, we also unveiled additional activities that will be taking place to further support B Corp month. This includes a litter-picking event on the 28th of March, which we’ll hold in collaboration with other Welsh-based B Corp companies, for a day of supporting environmental change and teamwork.
Exploring the Significance of B Corp Month
B Corp month provides us with the perfect opportunity to commemorate the exceptional community of businesses contributing to positive change. The main aim of B Corp month is to celebrate what it means to be a certified B Corp business, spreading the word about the movement for change and educating each other on the importance of transforming our economic system for the better. This year, the theme for B Corp month is ‘This way forward’ which encourages all of us to continue leveraging our efforts in making improvements and prioritising our communities since gaining the certification. Transparency is a key focus for B Corp month, because of this, we’re sharing the ways we’re working towards a sustainable and equitable future, holding ourselves accountable every step of the way.
A brief recap on the activities of the day
Our incredible B Keepers set the agenda for the day. With a focus on diversity and inclusion, sustainability, and community, our ‘B Keepers’ are set on continuously developing our commitment to making both internal and external improvements across the business.
On the day, we revisited our B Corp scores and our D&I maturity score in comparison with other brands and discussed opportunities for improvement. Our current B Corp score stands at 81.6. We know that we have a long way to go, but by establishing a clear plan for the journey ahead, we’re confident that this will increase significantly over the next few years. By 2025, we’re aiming to increase our score to 90.
Although we’re set on making improvements across the board, key areas of focus for us will be increasing our community and customer frameworks. Because of this, we’ll be looking at how we can make more of a positive impact in our local community by utilising the OnHand volunteering app and looking at ways that we can reduce our supplier base to ‘shop locally’. In addition to this, we’ll continue to accelerate our development of policies and practices around D&I in particular to ensure we’re aligned with our customer base.
Focussing on our OnHand progress, we discussed as a group how we can better engage the business. With 229 employees overall and 180 signed up and ready for missions, we still need to get the other 91 staff members involved! So far, we’ve been successful in planting an incredible 3000+ trees, we’ve completed nearly 3,000 missions , and have reduced carbon emissions by 53.4mt. Looking forward, we’ll be identifying ways we can add value to our community and colleague well-being.
Adding to this, during the event we made significant progress in setting targets and timescales for our 2024 goals with some brilliant initiatives to achieve these. We discussed ways to maximise our relationship with GroceryAid and developed our engagement plan for the wider business and how we can continue embedding B Corp into our culture.
Additionally, as one of the select brands and retailers involved in GroceryAid, we’ve helped create a Maturity Model for Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) assessment. This model enables organisations to gauge their D&I performance and benchmark against others. It empowers businesses to analyse strengths and areas needing improvement through data. Among 824 companies, the average score was 3.9, while Tactical Solutions achieved a score of 4. There’s ample room for progress, but it’s a promising starting point!
Looking towards a goal-achieving year
During the event, our Working Groups – ‘Communities and Sustainability’ and ‘Wellness and Inclusion’ split up into their groups to strategise their plans and targets for the year ahead.
Our Wellness and Inclusion Group reflected on their 2023 achievements focussing on their main goal of continually improving the working experience at Tactical Solutions. As well as this, key topics that they were keen to develop included mental health support, cost of living, and DE&I.
Together the group decided upon five goals, each with a timescale and measurable outcome to ensure that they could hold themselves accountable and monitor their progress throughout the year. These five goals included:
- Improving our Diversity & Inclusion efforts by introducing training
- Creating a diverse workforce by widening recruitment demographics
- Tapping into key welfare topics like menopause and stress in the workplace
- Nurturing our existing employees by investing into their development
- Developing our reward and recognition initiatives
Through these focuses, the team are striving to improve inclusivity across the business, identifying ways that they can support the workforce and increase access to good job candidates.
Our Communities and Sustainability Group also reflected on their past achievements of the previous year. The team were successful in reducing the amount of paper brought as a business – reducing overall usage by over half. They also encouraged the business to take part in a meat-free week challenge and took part in plastic-free week. Adding to this, they scored significantly high on the number of environmental tasks completed on OnHand. Group members have also spent their time volunteering and fundraising for charities, this includes an incredible donation of £2,686.50 to the British Heart Foundation. Five goals that this group will be focussing on this year includes:
- Increasing engagement on the On Hand app
- Conducting customer sustainability checks to ensure we are working with the right companies where possible
- Increasing their volunteering efforts to better support the community.
- Giving back to our communities with more fundraising opportunities
- Offset our Carbon Footprint Values
Setting the foundation for change
Overall, the B The Change event was a great success in empowering the team and getting us all ready for the next wave of achievements. As a business, we feel more prepared for what lies ahead and we’re feeling confident that we’ll succeed in reaching our goals.
Tactical Solutions Managing Director Cathy Evans, shares her triumph in the successful B The Change event, commenting: “Coming together for our B Corp event, face to face, was truly inspiring. Collaborating on our plans for 2024 to enhance our business practices to become a better company left us feeling energised and committed to making a positive impact.
“We know we have a lot to do, but we’re all excited to be part of developing a programme of education, action and truly making a difference for all our colleagues to improve inclusion, well-being and positive impact in our local communities”.
We’d like to take this time to say a huge thank you to our team for getting involved in B The Change Day and for being an active part in us setting and reaching our B Corp commitments. We’ve now set the foundation for positive change and we’re keen to start putting our ideas into action! Stay tuned to see how our B Corp journey will flourish over the next few months.
For more information on B Corp month, please visit: The UK B Corporation Movement
