Aiming High: Tracking Workplace Inclusion and Diversity

Progress Report on B Lab’s Six Inclusive Economy Challenge Goals

By Madison Milano and Alicia Agnew, Co-Chairs of B Lab’s Inclusive Economy Challenge Working Group

Like the hundreds of B Corps participating in the Inclusive Economy Challenge, it’s time for B Lab to make our final progress report for the year. We’ve caught you up on our big takeaways from the past two years; now, let’s look at some real numbers.

The Inclusive Economy Challenge (IEC) is a call to action for Certified B Corps to make concrete improvements to their business practices in pursuit of a more inclusive economy. B Lab pulled the 25 questions from the B Impact Assessment that captured how businesses can be more inclusive and equitable in their workplace practices, governance, supply chain, and even environmental practices.

The challenge: choose three of those questions, set an improvement goal for each one, and work alongside your fellow B Corps to try to reach those goals in a year by August 31, 2018. Going beyond the three goals required by the Inclusive Economy Challenge, B Lab chose six questions to improve on, setting a goal for each one.

If you’ve found that working to create a more inclusive business is harder than you thought, you’re not alone. We’re sharing the goals we set and how we have (or haven’t) reached them, because we think there’s value in sharing the complicated truth. We also want to create some accountability for ourselves to keep working to do better. Here’s what we achieved and what we learned about each goal we set.

Illustration by: Jerrod Modica (Design Director at B Lab)

Goal 1: Diversity and Inclusion Trainings

Take the time to ask what people want to learn about.

Progress

2017: While we’ve offered trainings on equity, diversity, and inclusion every year, the only one of these topics we covered last year was:

• Definitions of diversity, equity and inclusion, as well as other key concepts related to an inclusive workplace

2018: This year, we covered three more of the recommended topics, with more than half our staff attending at least one.

• Unconscious bias training
• Cultural awareness, competency, and/or resolving inter-cultural conflict training
• Management/leadership for diversity, equity and inclusion

Why this metric: To create a truly inclusive workplace, our team needs to have shared understandings and expectations of what that means on the day-to-day and personal level.

Our goal: To incorporate all seven listed topics into our trainings and educational opportunities for staff this year

Did we meet it: No, but we made good progress. So far this year, we’ve implemented three new trainings:

• Unconscious bias training, using recorded trainings from Facebook and LinkedIn Learning, administered to about 40 of our 70 full-time staff
• Cultural competency training from Aperian Global, open to all staff and required for our team that administers B Corp Certification to businesses around the world
• Specialized equity, inclusion, and diversity training for our eight-person Executive Team, along with long-term one-on-one coaching on inclusive leadership

Our tips: To make your trainings as valuable as possible, be sure to survey your staff about what they’re most interested in learning about, and how. We learned our team primarily wanted to learn through small group workshops and facilitated trainings with experts. We’ll be readministering that survey regularly both to determine if this year’s trainings were successful and to keep track of how our team likes to learn.

More on diversity and inclusion training: Check out our Best Practice Guide on the Basics of Diversity & Inclusion in the Workplace to start thinking about trainings for your workplace, or explore Certified B Corporations that offer training like TMI Consulting, Change Catalyst, and Inclusiva Consultadores.

Goal 2: Management of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

Collecting data is crucial, but be ready for it to raise as many questions as it answers.

Progress

2017: We do yearly anonymous demographic surveys, but hadn’t done any deeper analysis, so we only had one recommended practice in place.

• Company anonymously surveys employees on gender identity, race/ethnicity, disability status and/or other demographic factors to measure the diversity of its workforce

2018: We continued that survey and adopted two more of the recommended practices.

• Company anonymously surveys employees on gender identity, race/ethnicity, disability status and/or other demographic factors to measure the diversity of its workforce
• Company has set specific, measurable diversity improvement goals that are reviewed by senior executives and/or a Board of Directors
• Company analyzes job satisfaction, promotion, retention rates, and/or benefits by different demographic groups

Why this metric: A foundational belief of the B Corp community is that you can’t manage what you don’t measure. Proactively collecting and analyzing information about the diversity, equity, and inclusion of our workplace sets the foundation for improving it. We had lots of assumptions about the inclusivity of our workplace, but we wanted to check those assumptions.

Our goal: To implement all five recommended best practices.

Did we meet it: No, but by beginning to do deeper analysis of our team’s experience by demographics, we set ourselves up to go further, and hope to conduct a pay equity analysis in 2019.

Our tips: Asking better questions about your team’s culture and experience is a good first step, but have a plan with what you’ll do once you have answers. When we surveyed our team about their job experience and satisfaction and then broke their responses down by demographic, we learned so much — especially about the differing work experiences of people of color at B Lab as compared to the work experiences of their white teammates — it took nearly all year to work through that data, share it with our full team, and make a plan for how to address the issues it raised. We’re going to dedicate our entire next communication to digging into the results of that survey and how it drove us to prioritize our work.

More on diversity and inclusion training: Explore how B Corp GoodWell is working to standardize how we measure pay gaps, hear how People Against Dirty updated their analyses as part of the IEC, or check out the Inclusion Survey by B Corp Culture Amp for an example of how to hear from your staff.

Goal 3: Management diversity

“Diversity” isn’t a monolith, and there’s no one-size-fits-all solution.

Progress

2017:We only have numbers currently on gender, race, and ethnicity for our managers. Last year, our formal “management team” was:

• 50% female
• 10% people of color

2018: Our current managers are:

• 70% female
• 14% people of color

Why this metric: A diverse team of managers creates a more welcoming work environment, recognizes and harnesses the value of different experiences and perspectives in decision-making, and is a sign of inclusive opportunity for career advancement. While B Lab’s team has grown in diversity over the years, the diversity of our managers has lagged behind.

Our goal: To continue to increase the percentage of our managers that are women and/or individuals from underrepresented populations, remaining in the 50%+ answer bucket.

Did we meet it? Yes, technically, but we’re not satisfied. We’ve learned we’re doing a lot better when it comes to bringing white women into management than we are people of color. As we work to create a much more diverse team of managers, we’ve set a short-term goal to focus specifically on bringing the racial and ethnic diversity of our managers (14% people of color) to at least be equal to that of our broader team (22% people of color). We also know we need to go beyond gender, race, and ethnicity when we consider and measure “underrepresented groups.” Metrics (including those we designed) that bundle together for ease of reporting all underrepresented groups into a monolith don’t reflect the nuances of real people and organizations.

Our tips: Be sure to think through your organizational definition of who qualifies as a “manager” when tracking these metrics over time. B Lab underwent a strategic reorganization in 2017 and 2018, which changed who counted as a manager. Our numbers for 2018 are based on all full-time staff that have any other staff reporting to them, including part-time staff and interns. By setting a clear definition, we’ll be better able to track this metric in a comparable way going forward.

More on management diversity: Check out our two relevant Best Practice Guides on Recruiting a Diverse Workforce and Engaging and Retaining a Diverse Workforce, or read about B Corp Sweet Livity’s work to build leadership development programming for women of color.

Goal 4: Increased Board of Directors Diversity

Diverse perspectives in governance are important, and meaningful change takes more than a year.

Progress

2016: This goal was a continuation of an Inclusive Economy Challenge goal we set in 2016. In 2016, we had a seven-person Board that featured two white women and two men of color.

2018: We have a six-person Board that features three women and two people of color.

Why this metric: Just as we want our managers to bring diverse perspectives to decision-making at B Lab, we want to do the same at the highest levels of the organization. In addition, a diverse board sets the tone for the organization, and signals to external stakeholders something important about the organization’s priorities and worldview.

Our goal: A board that is made up of more than 50% women and people of color, including gender parity.

Did we meet it? Yes, but as we add more Board members over the next 18 months, we intend to do more, with a focus on racial and ethnic diversity and global representation. To learn about the work we’ve done toward diversifying our Board of Directors, check out the first section of our post 5 Things We Learned by Focusing on Our Internal Equity, Diversity and Inclusion.

To dig into more diverse and inclusive governance yourself, check out our Best Practice Guide on Using Corporate Governance for Accountability and Inclusion, or read the case for board diversity from B Corp TMI Consulting.

Goal 5: Significant Suppliers

Changing your purchasing practices in a meaningful way takes longer than a year.

(In the B Impact Assessment, significant suppliers are your largest non-labor suppliers, outside of rent and utilities, that collectively represent approximately 80% of your purchases)

Progress

2017: 15% of purchases spent with significant suppliers (about $250,000)

2018: So far, 11.5% (about $166,000), with more to come by the end of the year.

Why this metric: Women- and minority-owned businesses face greater barriers to success; by choosing to work with them when possible, we can work against that trend.

Our goal: At least 10 percent

Did we meet it? Yes, but we should have aimed higher. As we worked on our reporting this year, we realized that we underestimated our performance in 2017. We spent $1.6 million with our significant suppliers in 2017, and about $250,000 was with women- and minority-owned businesses, which placed us at about 15%, not in the 1–9% bucket as we initially thought.

Two-thirds of the way through 2018, we’re at about 11%, but we hope to surpass last year as we prioritize women- and minority-owned vendors for our events later in 2018.

Our tips: Changing large purchases is tough. Here are a few things to consider:

• Determine which of your suppliers can’t be changed, either at all or within your planned timeline. Many of B Lab’s biggest significant suppliers in 2017 were the companies from whom we purchased software (about 14%) and external consultants to help us with our strategy, communications, and technology (about 39%). The software couldn’t be changed, and even when consultants could be switched, the contracts wouldn’t allow us to make changes before the end of the year.
• Focus on where you’re flexible. For B Lab, that meant looking at our budget for our annual events. Between hotel reservations, event venues, and event management companies, over 27% of our significant supplier purchases in 2017 were event-related. Since we moved the locations of these events every year, it would be easier to make significant changes before the year ended. So far, as we prepare for our upcoming Champions Retreat event, we’re spending nearly 40% of our $490,000 budget with women- and/or minority-owned vendors ($196,000 planned so far), including ACCESS New Orleans, Green Living (also a B Corp!), Raised Visual Media, and our event convener Jocelyn Macdougall.
• Make a plan to incorporate supplier diversity into your existing policies. B Lab had existing purchasing preferences based on local ownership (2% of 2018 significant supplier purchases, about $26,500) and B Corp Certification (13%, about $185,000). We created a weighted rubric to help our team choose between vendors. The rubric weighs eight different factors we want our staff to consider, with diverse ownership receiving the highest weighting. In practical terms, this means that our teams making large purchases look for women- and minority-owned vendors first. We plan to start piloting the rubric by the end of 2018.

More on suppliers: Download our Best Practice Guide on impactful purchasing.

Goal 6: Carbon Offsets

There’s low-hanging fruit, but we need more time and people to make a real dent.

Progress

2017: Somewhere low in the 1–24% bucket

2018: We’ve offset 68 tons of greenhouse gas emissions so far in 2018, but we don’t know what percentage that is of our overall total.

Why this metric: The effects of climate change fall most heavily on populations that are already marginalized. Climate and carbon aren’t just environmental issues; they’re social justice issues. While offsetting our emissions isn’t as impactful as reducing or eliminating them entirely, we also don’t yet have any staff focused full-time on our own sustainability to manage a process to become carbon-neutral. The only carbon offsets B Lab did in 2017 were to offset the emissions of attendee flights to one of our events, putting us somewhere low in the 1–24% bucket.

Our goal: Offset at least 25% of our total greenhouse gas emissions

Did we meet it? We’re closer! We’re offsetting more carbon than we ever have before, but by spending more time on this question, we realized we actually don’t have all the information to answer it properly. We’ve offset 90% of the emissions from of our staff travel so far this year: 39 tons in the first quarter of the year and 29 tons in the second quarter. However, we can’t answer what percentage of our total emissions we’ve offset, because we don’t know what our total footprint is.

With no staff focused on our sustainability full-time, we didn’t have capacity to do a full carbon inventory, nor did we realize we would need to when we chose this goal to work on. We’re excited that we’re offsetting so much of our travel emissions, but without that inventory, we can’t meaningfully answer this question. We’ll continue to offset travel through the rest of the year, and while we hope to be able to pursue a carbon inventory in 2019, we can at least work towards adding offsets for our electricity or server usage without one.

More on businesses addressing climate change: Check out the resources offered by our partners at Climate Collaborative, a group of leaders in the natural foods industry (including many Certified B Corps) connecting companies to resources to take action against climate change. For more on offsetting travel emissions, learn how B Corp Bodhi Surf is working to change the tourism industry’s attitude toward carbon.

What’s Next

Setting lofty goals, even if you don’t reach them, will teach you a lot about what your organization needs to learn to do better. B Lab set a lot of great, audacious goals. We found out that, in order to reach them—or to push ourselves further—we’re going to need more budget, more time, and more people. Our next post will dig into how trying to meet our Inclusive Economy Challenge goals has helped us understand the long-term, budgeted initiatives we’ll need to get there. Spoiler alert: Our first step will be hiring a Director of Equity, Inclusion, and Diversity to lead this work, instead of relying on staff with other full-time responsibilities.

We’ll be continuing to take the Inclusive Economy Challenge as it rolls into its third year, which means setting a new round of goals. Some will be brand new, but we’ll also be continuing the work we started this year. Our hope when creating the IEC was that even if companies didn’t meet their initial goals, they’d be inspired to keep working. That’s certainly been the case for B Lab.

Regardless of the next IEC goals we set, we know we’ll be working on:

• Testing our purchasing rubric with the staff who manage our event budgets, starting with purchases of $10,000 or more
• Continuing to offset our travel GHG emissions and determining what resources would be necessary to conduct a full carbon inventory
• Offering emotional intelligence training to all staff
• Adding discrimination and harassment training to our onboarding process for new staff
• Administering another all-staff survey on job satisfaction, this time considering demographics like ability, sexual orientation, and gender identity
• Conducting a pay equity analysis
• Piloting a staff-led mentorship program in September to help provide pathways to management for our staff

How is your company benchmarking your internal inclusion and diversity? Have any advice for us on how to push forward work that’s been stalled? Let us know in the comments or reach out at inclusion@bcorporation.net.