B Corp insights: Delivering and scaling impact
By Sally Pritchett
CEO
B Local Surrey is a network run by local B Corps, fostering a community of purpose-driven businesses and individuals committed to building a better world. It brings together certified B Corps and those aspiring to join the movement through networking and information-sharing events, empowering businesses to grow their impact.
At the newly B Corp-certified Denbies Wine Estate, this vibrant community gathered for an inspiring conversation on scaling up and doing business better. A quick show of hands revealed a diverse audience – seasoned B Corps, newly certified businesses, and those curious about joining the movement.
The keynote speakers, Anuradha Chugh, former CEO of Pukka and B Lab UK Board Member, and Douglas Lamont, CEO of Tony’s Chocolonely and former CEO of Innocent, shared powerful stories of leading purpose-driven brands.
Putting purpose at the heart of business
Anuradha spoke passionately about building a culture that sustains purpose through growth, challenges, and change. She likened it to being a farmer – constantly tending, listening, and nurturing the culture of the business to ensure values are deeply rooted. Her reflections on how purpose, culture, and courage intersect were a reminder that real solutions often emerge from within, empowering teams to lead the way.
Douglas took us on a journey into Tony’s Chocolonely’s mission to eradicate exploitation in the cocoa industry. He reminded us that being mission-first isn’t just a business strategy; it’s a way to drive systemic change. Through innovation, like sharing their open supply chain, Tony’s Chocolonely exemplifies how a purpose-led model can be both impactful and profitable.
Showcasing local B Corps
Members from of our Surrey B Corp community also shared their inspiring stories. Tad Ostrowski from Artington Legal explored the balance between time, cost, and quality, emphasising how aligning your values with how you spend your time can maximize your impact.
Kate Gibson of Gibson Games reflected on her family business’s 100-year legacy of creating joy and connection, sharing that consistent, everyday actions toward positive change are often what drives the greatest impact.
Dan Webber from Chimney Fire Coffee shared how they build equitable supply chains through long-term farmer partnerships. By staying true to the business’s founding mission of fairness and sustainability, they’ve maintained their values while growing the business.
Finally, Matthew Wood from Millwood addressed wellbeing in the construction industry, a field known for its challenges. He discussed how even small efforts – like trying to do just 1% more – can lead to significant and transformative changes.
Key insights for driving and scaling impact
Here are some standout takeaways from the event speakers on scaling impact effectively:
- Drive culture: A mission-led culture attracts top talent and motivates teams to achieve extraordinary results. It creates a positive cycle: purpose draws in exceptional people, who drive success and amplify impact, which in turn attracts even more talent. Culture is the foundation of impact.
- Collaborate for solutions: Form coalitions and explore partnerships, even with competitors, to address shared challenges. Movements like B Local Surrey demonstrate the power of collective effort and knowledge sharing.
- Aim to inspire others: Look for solutions that are clear, simple, and easy to replicate that can scale beyond your business or the B Corp movement. By empowering others to adopt your approach, you amplify your impact.
- Have patience: Change rarely follows a straight path – it ebbs and flows like the tide. With persistence and purpose, even small steps build momentum over time.
- Bring joy to your mission: People respond to connection and positivity, not lectures. Communicating your purpose in an engaging, relatable way encourages action and builds understanding.
- Sign the Better Business Act: Commit to driving change at a systemic level by supporting initiatives like the Better Business Act, which aims to ensure all businesses prioritise people and the planet alongside profit.
These are undeniably challenging economic and globally turbulent times, testing the resolve and potential of purpose-driven businesses. But staying transparent and honest – both with your team, customers, suppliers and wider community – is vital. Sometimes, protecting your mission may mean making tough decisions, like scaling back projects that don’t fully align with your impact goals. What matters is staying true to your values, making a difference where you can, and being upfront about the challenges along the way.
What’s next?
For more opportunities to connect and collaborate, join the B Local Surrey LinkedIn group. Plans are already underway for the next B Corp Month event in March.
And for another dose of inspiration, save the date for Green Monday on 20 January 2025, where we’ll transform Blue Monday into a day of sustainability and optimism. Packed with networking sessions and thought-provoking panels, this event is designed to inspire action. Find out more.
Big Difference: £20K pro bono support for fairer, healthier, happier workforces
By Sally Pritchett
CEO
As part of our mission to create fairer, healthier, and happier workplaces, we are excited to launch our new programme, Big Difference. In 2025, we will support one UK charity or not-for-profit by providing £20,000 worth of pro bono strategic, creative, and communications expertise to a successful applicant.
For more details, please see our entry criteria below and don’t miss this great opportunity to tap into expert support.
Entries are open now and close on 31st January 2025.
Programme details and application guidelines
We are seeking a UK-based not-for-profit organisation or charity to receive pro bono creative communications support.
Campaign Objective:
All applicants must have a campaign with one or more of the following objectives:
- Workplace Fairness: Promote equitable practices and eliminate discrimination within workplaces.
- Workplace Health: Improve employee wellbeing and mental health.
- Workplace Happiness: Foster positive work environments and employee satisfaction.
Eligibility:
- UK-Based not-for-profit: Applicants must be a registered charity or non-profit organisation operating within the United Kingdom. Open to both regional and national organisations (operating region does not need to be limited to the Surrey / South East base of Something Big).
- Campaign Focus: The proposed campaign must align with the stated objectives of workplace fairness, health, or happiness.
Campaign Scope:
The budget the campaign will be £20,000 plus VAT, and will sit within the following scope:
- Creative Strategy: Development of a comprehensive campaign strategy, with the objective of making workplaces fairer, healthier and/or happier.
- Design and Copywriting: Creation of all necessary design assets and written materials.
- Campaign Management: Oversight and execution of the campaign.
Timeline:
- Entry Period: December 2024 – 31 January 2025
- Winner Announcement: 28 February 2025
- Campaign Launch: March – September 2025
Terms and Conditions:
- Intellectual Property: Campaign intellectual property will remain with Something Big.
- Out of scope: No external costs including paid media placement, printed materials or skills out of the scope of the Something Big team are included.
- Awards Submissions: Something Big reserves the right to enter the campaign into relevant awards.
- Pro Bono Value: The maximum value of the pro bono work will not exceed £20,000+VAT.
- No Entry Fee: There is no cost to submit an application.
- Selection Process: Applicants will first be shortlisted based on the selection criteria outlined below. Those who meet the criteria will then be voted on by Something Big employees. After the vote, a final small shortlist will be created, and the selected applicants will proceed to the interview stage to determine the winning applicant.
Selection Criteria:
- Campaign Impact: The potential for the campaign to make a meaningful difference in improving workplace culture.
- Alignment with Objectives: The extent to which the campaign aligns with the stated objectives of workplace fairness, health, or happiness.
How to Apply: Complete entry form.
If you have any questions, get in touch.
Great for women, great for all
By Sally Pritchett
CEO
We’ve been ranked in the top 10 UK’s Best workplaces for Women (Small Businesses), alongside 330 companies including industry-leading and global brands. This achievement is a team effort, not based on management promises, policies and words on an entry form, but on day-to-day actions leading to genuine and personal team feedback through Great Place to Work’s independent employee survey. Data analysed looks at how well organisations have removed barriers to female career advancement and created workplaces where all employees can flourish, regardless of gender.
Whilst we’re delighted to have achieved this incredible accolade, our mission is to create workplaces that are fairer, healthier and happier for all – both at Something Big and in the organisations we support.
Our journey to this achievement hasn’t been about giving women special treatment. It’s been about driving a positive and inclusive workplace culture, for everyone, which means breaking down barriers for women in particular.
Regardless of where we want to be as a world and society, we’re not there yet. The world is still patriarchal, unconscious bias continues to be a challenge, there are still not enough visible female role models and gender pay gaps remain a problem.
‘”Parity in the workplace remains a work in progress.”
Great Place to Work
Positive change is visible on the horizon though. In the UK’s Best Workplaces for Women, 42% of C-suite positions are held by women versus just 28% in FTSE 350 organisations. Pay gaps are narrowing in the UK, with women earning 92p to their male counterparts £1, and companies ranked in this list have closed that gap further, with the UK average of female employees agreeing they are ‘paid fairly for what the work they do’ at just 53%, in the Top 5 UK’s Best Workplaces for Women a whopping 83% of female respondents agreed they were fairly paid.
The UK’s Best Workplaces for Women are also proof that delivering work/life balance is possible, whilst the UK average stands at 60% for ‘people are encouraged to balance their work life and personal life’ in the UK’s Best Workplaces for women, a significantly higher 84% of employees agree with this statement.
What are we getting right at Something Big to earn our 8th place ranking?
#Flexibility
Flexibility isn’t a buzzword, a policy or a broad commitment – it’s a huge undertaking that takes a team effort to deliver. According to GPTW’s report, 40% of women not working say that access to flexible work would mean they could take on paid work and 77% said they’d be more likely to apply for a job if it advertises flexible working options.
At Something Big, flexibility is a way of life. From changing and flexing working hours around ever-changing care arrangements to sabbaticals mean that work can fit around life, rather than squeezing life around gaps in work.
Our tip: Delivering flexibility successfully isn’t just about senior leadership commitment, it’s also about peer-to-peer support. Working alongside colleagues on different hours or shorter days/weeks can be tough, it takes empathy, great communication skills and respect for boundaries to make it work without sacrificing quality, productivity or pace. Support and nurture your whole team to make flexibility work for everyone.
#Appreciation
Everyone wants (and deserves) to feel appreciated. For women, this is especially critical, when outside of work their effort and contribution can often feel invisible and taken for granted. In the workplace, there’s a disparity between genders when it comes to feeling that management shows appreciation for good work and extra effort. 64% of men feel appreciated versus 58% of women. Unsurprisingly, this gap is closed in companies featured on this list, with both genders scoring equally and with higher appreciation levels, with both genders scoring a significantly higher 85%.
Our tip: Appreciation often costs nothing. We believe it’s as critical a component as other rewards are often overlooked or left to busy line managers who might not always have time. Set up structures that encourage regular peer-to-peer appreciation, celebrate awareness days like Employee Appreciation Day, even when budgets are under pressure try to make space for fun.
To find out more about what it takes to create a workplace where women can thrive, you can read the full report here or talk to us about our journey and how we’re helping the organisations we’re supporting.
Celebrating two years as a B Corp agency
By Sally Pritchett
CEO
As we celebrate our second B Corp anniversary, it’s a great moment to reflect on what has been a big year for Something Big.
We believed we were already living the values of B Corp long before the movement was even formed, so our expectations of how much it would impact our business were low. However, as the movement has expanded to over 2,000 businesses in the UK alone, and brand awareness has grown – with 38% of surveyed individuals recognising or having heard of B Corp – it has become hard not to get caught up in the excitement.
In fact, within the global B Corp community, the UK is the fastest-growing country with the highest brand awareness, although the movement started in the USA all the way back in 2006. It might be hard to pinpoint why this is, but what we can say is that as part of this growing community we’ve been caught up in a snowball of progress and impact.
Highlights from our second year as a B Corp agency
1. Speaking up
Having set out to help make workplaces fairer, healthier and happier, we’ve not only helped our numerous clients improve their employee communications, but have also inspired over 1,300 DEI, wellbeing, HR and communications professionals in our growing community through our series of free, virtual webinars. If you’re getting FOMO, sign up to our LI newsletter to stay in the know.
2. Forming alliances
Never ones to sit back, we’ve actively got involved in the B Corp community, creaing and driving a series of alliances with other great B Corp businesses, building partnerships and growing our network.
3. Always learning
Living our values to the max, we’ve been making mistakes and learning from them, check out our Impact Report where we share our learnings.
5. Measuring and tracking
We’re excited to have finally found a robust and sustainable way of measuring our full carbon emissions and a genuine way to move the dial on reducing them, thanks to Ecologi Zero.
5. Bigger goals
As we’ve gained our confidence, we’re keeping up the progress with some bigger plans to make a meaningful difference. This year we’ll be helping organisations engage their employees in their sustainability journey, continuing to support the DEIB agenda, and helping organisations provide better support for employees living with cancer. We’re only just getting started.
If you’re looking to partner with great people, experts in their field, who care about being responsible and looking after our planet, then we have the B Corp agencies for you… Find out more
How does being a B Corp make us a better business?
Beyond being better for the planet and our people, we believe being a B Corp has made us a better business to work with, from our clients to our supply partners. From better service levels to better relationships here’s what you can expect when you work with a B Corp.
Want to join us in our journey of making a meaningful difference?
Whether you’re looking for a new agency to work with, you’re another B Corp looking to join one of our alliances, or just want to keep in touch with our progress, talk to us.