Rationale is a certified B Corp! - Rationale

Rationale is a certified B Corp!

Our mission is to create impact and to grow our agency by making a positive impact wherever we can.

 

We are very excited to announce that we are a certified B Corp. This is something we have been working towards since Rationale began, and has been forged into the foundations of our business as it’s grown. The achievement feels particularly great given that we are still a relatively young business. On top of this, we’re proud to have achieved a score of 100.4, which is well above the average score of 80. 

Being a certified B Corporation means we are demonstrating to our employees, customers, and the wider community that Rationale is committed to being a business that is a force for good and contributing meaningfully to a more inclusive and sustainable economy.

 

Putting our money where our mouth is
We are an impact-driven organisation that works with other like-minded organisations to define, back up and communicate their positive impact. It has always been top of mind for us to walk it like we talk it. 

Profit is important, it’s how we sustain ourselves as a business, but we believe there is so much more we can achieve. The B Corp Assessment and certification has given us a framework to grow and build Rationale in a way that balances profit with purpose and is authentic to our proposition, clients and our employees. 

For our clients, current and future, we hope becoming B Corp certified will validate our values and show clearly that we are qualified to advise and exist in this space. It establishes a level of trust that we are holding ourselves to a standard that goes above and beyond others in our industry. We are now obligated to ensure that we are ethical, transparent and prioritise positive impact in everything that we do. 

 

Driven by our values to put purpose before profit
We live our values every day. They were one of the first things we drafted and shared when we hired our first employees. Over the last year-and-a-half, alongside negotiating the Covid-19 pandemic, we have worked to back up each of these values with relevant, measurable and actionable proof points to make sure that we are delivering against each of them. 

  1. We are OPEN
  2. We are EQUAL
  3. We are POSITIVE
  4. We are CURIOUS
  5. We are ONE

Find out more about our values here!

 

We are doing business differently
Working towards and qualifying as a B Corp is a long and sometimes challenging process, it takes time and a great deal of managing and collating information from all parts of the agency. And while it did take us time and resources to put our application together, we got there through a real team effort – led by Paula, our Strategy Executive. 

Something heartening in the process was that many of the initiatives and approaches that helped us to meet the Assessment requirements were already a part of our business – particularly the initiatives that back up our values and our Employee Benefit programme. This meant there were very few policies or practises that we needed to change or adopt in order to qualify. We were doing a lot of the right things before we began the Assessment, the B Corp Accreditation just feels like a tangible acknowledgement of our approach being the right approach. 

The B Corp Assessment considers the impact you are making as an organisation across five areas – Governance, Environment, Workers, Community, and Customers. 

Here are just some of the ways we have met the criteria: 

  • Governance – Our mission statement commits us to positive social change that drives the work we do as well as our decision making. We also generate a significant proportion of our revenue from partnerships with purpose-driven organisations.
  • Community – The impact we have on our local community is important to us. To achieve this, we have engaged in schemes such as the Kickstarter campaign to increase diversity within our team. Our team members also get one paid day off a year to volunteer for an organisation in our local community. 
  • Workers – We have worked hard to establish a best practice Employee Benefit scheme – including access to healthcare and counselling support, our Living Wage and Disability Confident employer credentials and our commitments to employee career development. 
  • Environment – Our environmental footprint is, thankfully, relatively small, but we still want to make a difference where we can. We are a ‘1% for the Planet’ organisation, meaning we donate 1% of our revenue to charities that benefit our local communities and the environment. We are working continuously to make sure the practises in our offices and travel arrangements are as sustainable as possible. 
  • Customers – We dedicate a quota of hours each quarter to supporting underserved and purpose-driven enterprises pro bono or at a discounted rate. This allows us to open out our services and enable success to organisations that otherwise would not be able to access them. 

 

What’s next?
Certification is only the first step! Now we are here, we want to make sure we continue to uphold all our commitments. 

And, by next year, we want to improve our score. To achieve this, we will focus on: 

  1. Improving our environmental policies – We have moved into a new office, and this presents a new set of opportunities to better manage and reduce our environmental impact.
  2. Building out the diversity of our team – We expect to grow our team over the next year, and although when it comes to gender we are incredibly balanced, we would like to prioritise hiring from more diverse talent pools, strengthen our inclusive hiring policies, and learn from our partners who are experts in doing this, such as Creative Access. 

 

If you’re interested in knowing more about the B Corporation Accreditation process, or what it means for engaging with Rationale, please email hello@wearerationale.com. We’d be happy to tell you more!