Create Employee Champions and Customer Advocates Around Your Mission
When Athleta Certified as a B Corp, It Coordinated Employee Engagement + Customer Awareness
In March 2018, Gap Inc. became one of the largest publicly traded retail companies with a Certified B Corporation subsidiary when women’s outdoor apparel company Athleta certified. How did this subsidiary navigate the certification process and, how does it plan to build a company of employee champions and a community of customer advocates? We spoke with several Athleta employees to find out.
Doing good through business is often seen as a charitable, nice-to-have add-on to a robust business plan. But lately, with news of banks offering cheaper capital to companies that can verify positive impact on society and environment, having a purpose bigger than profit is rapidly being recognized as a must-have. Athleta is one company who has embraced being a force for good as good for business. Athleta’s Chief Financial Officer Chris Samway says the company sees the benefits of having a triple-bottom-line approach, of answering growing consumer demand for business to have positive impact, and of doing so under the auspices of giant Gap Inc.
“From a purely financial perspective, the return on investment (ROI) associated with aligning interests of business with those of society is compelling,” Samway says. “We know the next generation of consumers increasingly cares about brands that stand for something. We hear from our customers that putting people and planet right up there with profit is something that resonates with her.”
And Gap Inc. has embraced the changes — both the B Corp certification and the required legal shift to incorporate as a benefit corporation. “That [B Corp certification] is a values issue that our customers are super responsive to. The engagement in that brand is amazing, and that’s what consumers are looking for today. I don’t care if it’s a millennial or a 70-year-old woman. She sees that as a brand that she can relate to from a values standpoint, and it’s a really powerful equation,” Gap CEO Art Peck said in an interview with CNBC.
Certified B Corporations like Athleta meet the highest standards of positive impact on society and the environment. Learn what it means to be B Corp certified.
The support continued through the associated legal commitment of Certified B Corps, which for Athleta included amending the company’s bylaws to list its mission alongside its returns as a measurable company goal and decision-making tool. A public announcement about the change and goals for the future of the business came in Gap Inc.’s 2018 Form 10-K, filed with the SEC: “Additionally, we have amended Athleta’s legal charter to become a Delaware Public Benefit Corporation in order to further uphold our commitments to people and the planet. With this accreditation, Gap Inc. has become one of the largest publicly traded retail companies with a B Corp certified subsidiary apparel brand. We plan to leverage the learnings from Athleta as a case study for Gap Inc., providing a benchmark and roadmap of potential opportunities for greater social and environmental impact across the enterprise.”
Letting the SEC and the company’s legal team know is one thing. But how do companies take such a big, technical, jargon-heavy change and express what it means effectively to all the company’s employees — including at each retail location — and customers?
We asked members of the Athleta team to share what it took to get a subsidiary of a publicly traded multinational company through certification as well as the strategic employee and customer engagement Athleta executed.
Becoming a Certified B Corporation as a Subsidiary
“We share B Lab’s belief that we can no longer solely rely on governments, NGOs and nonprofits to solve the world’s social and environmental problems. Simply put, corporations need to be a part of the solution.”
—CFO Chris Samway
The company has spent the last few years honing its mission and aligning itself as a purpose-driven company. Samway met with leaders at B Corps Warby Parker and Allbirds and initially reached out to B Lab. “The more I learned about B Corp, the more strongly I felt it was the right time for Athleta to join the movement and accelerate its commitment to social impact and environmental sustainability. We learned from other Certified B Corps that the legal requirement to become a benefit corporation means balancing financial gain with purposeful action to create benefits for multiple stakeholders — expanding the concept of creating shareholder value to the broader notion of stakeholder value.”
He tasked Emily Allbritten, Athleta’s Senior Analyst of Strategy and Marketing Effectiveness, with fulfilling the certification requirements, including taking the B Impact Assessment, and getting the company across the finish line. “It was a full year-long process where we utilized the assessment to help us truly measure all of the amazing work of our teams. The assessment has helped us look at the business more holistically and prioritize where we could put energy and resources for the greatest impact.”
As part of Gap Inc., the company had to both secure support for the move to B Corp from a strategic standpoint; and also integrate applicable Gap Inc. shared practices in many parts of the B Impact Assessment in areas such as supply chains, salary equity and more.
Allbritten stressed the importance of bringing in an executive sponsor as key to support the certification process in a large company like Athleta and as a subsidiary under Gap Inc. Her team worked with about five executive sponsors, including Samway as the main sponsor. Throughout the process, Allbritten estimates she connected with about 35 people across multiple internal teams, including sustainability, operations, human resources, real estate, and, of course, the legal team and the Board of Directors.
Both Samway and Allbritten expressed receiving support in pursuing the certification and the surrounding requirements “As with any strategic business decision, it came down to demonstrating the value. We had tremendous support from our Gap Inc. executive leadership team throughout the certification process. We are fortunate to be a part of Gap Inc., a company whose founders Doris and Don Fisher instilled core values of community and environmental stewardship and asked future generations of leaders to ‘do more than just sell clothes.’ ”
“To gain alignment, we went on somewhat of an internal roadshow to educate folks across the company about what B Corp is, how it would change the way we measure success and why it was significant. We stressed that the framework developed by B Lab aligned with the company’s strategic direction and not only helps businesses measure their social and environmental impact, but also provides a roadmap for thoughtful investment and opportunity,” Samway adds.
Letting the Team Know, Getting Organized
Once certification was complete, it was time to focus on spreading the word. “We announced our successful B Corp certification at one of our monthly Athleta Huddles, when the whole team is together,” Allbritten says. “We thought it was important for employees to hear about it first — they are what made this possible and they are our greatest advocates. We explained the overall purpose of becoming a B Corp and how we’re going to use it to help Athleta move forward into our next goals for the coming years. We celebrated! Then we internally announced it at our quarterly company-wide Gap Inc. meeting, also a week before the public announcement.”
The goal was to celebrate the employees who had helped make Athleta operate with purpose and to highlight their commitment to continue to improve the company’s positive impact. Athleta leadership hopes that each employee will be able to share the value and importance of being a B Corp, and to become champions for the company’s mission in everything they do.
It was important to include employees who work at the company’s nearly 150 stores, too. “We had signage up in our break room area and printed in our Core Leader Binder,” says Athleta store General Manager Mary Katherine Radin. “We listed it as a topic for our store ‘chat-ins’ the full first week after the public announcement, and we were able to dig in and share the excitement as they came in for their shifts during announcement week.”
The employee engagement didn’t end with announcement week. “Now we are setting up a B Corp Governance Committee to lead the company in improving its B Corp score in the coming years. The committee will continue to educate our employees and provide the tools and learning needed to increase their understanding and engagement,” Allbritten says. “We plan to use the B Impact Assessment as a helpful, strategic guide for us to consider in our decision-making. We will match up our strategy goals with the assessment, and we can use the assessment to prioritize shifting resources for impact. We want people, planet, and profit to be a filter for all of our employees to use as they make decisions on a daily basis.”
What do Athleta store employees currently think about being a B Corp? For Radin, “To me, being a B Corp means that we understand the impact we can have as a corporation. … It makes me proud to be in a group with companies that are truly like-minded. This shows me that, yes, we are here to run a successful business, but that success is measured for us in more than just dollars, and that doing what’s right for the planet matters to us.”
Going Public, Minus Potential Overwhelm
“Being awarded a B Corp status is an amazing honor, but a fairly complex story to tell. We wanted our consumers to understand what B Corp certification means, but also why Athleta was rewarded this certification. Our goal was to provide tangible examples of our company mission, business and product practices, and employee culture, to help bring our B Corp story to life,” says Athleta Senior Brand Marketing Manager, Stephanie Tsai. “The certification allows us to build upon our story of being a socially responsible company. The recognition, while a complex story, signals to our customers that we don’t just talk the talk but walk the walk as well. It provides something tangible for us to point to.”
But how can a brand distill all the pieces that B Corp encompasses — environment, customers, inclusion, community, governance, and more — and make it understandable, exciting, and actionable? “Our biggest challenge was deciding which key B Corp values we wanted to focus in on. We held a cross-functional meeting, with everyone from sustainability teams to store teams to HR teams, to decide on three key pillars,” Tsai says. “We landed on sustainability, community, and empowerment of women and girls. Those made sense because they are already pillars of our brand. Once those were nailed down, it made it easier to start putting numbers and facts behind each pillar to help bring our story to life in a digestible way.”
And the pillars came to life in different ways across multiple platforms including social media, the websites, stores and the catalog. “Social media provides more of a platform to visually storytell than our other marketing platforms, but we wanted to make sure that our content broke through. We used an Instagram story to share in a way that would keep consumers engaged and provide visual examples of how our company exhibits B Corp qualities. It also gave us the ability to have viewers swipe up for more information, to take them to site to learn more,” says Athleta Senior Manager of Social Media Amy Plavner.
The company’s website and mailed print catalogs were updated to reflect the company’s goals around the three pillars, and to include the B Corp logo and a website for customers to learn more.
For the retail customers, the storefront windows were decorated with B Corp decals and impact statements — again aligned along the three chosen pillars — to inform customers and encourage them to ask for more information and learn what the B Corp movement is about.
“For customers, we were definitely fielding questions about our windows, as the B Corp decals have been really impactful. Our retail employees are talking about how excited we are to be part of the B Corp family with customers,” Radin says. “Also, when customers are in the fitting rooms where we have magnetic marketing about our sustainability goals, we have been able to start conversations around those sustainability topics. She is reading up on the goals, and then we have the opportunity to jump in and share more.”
What’s Next?
“We don’t want to just be checking boxes. We want to use the B Impact Assessment as a guide to improve but not the only strategy or roadmap we utilize,” Allbritten says. “We hope to continue to be iterative and that the assessment will be, too. I think it gets at the heart of B Corps to actually find the most impactful ways to use business as a force for good, rather than use the assessment as a checklist for points.”
Allbritten says the B Corp community has been invaluable in sharing advice on how to keep improving and engaging. “I have been impressed by how much the companies in the B Corp community want to work together and share best practices,” Allbritten says. “These people are working on things that really matter and will make the world a better place.”
Samway confirms that the certification is just the beginning of Athleta’s journey to focus the business’s efforts on being a force for good. “We are inspired by companies like Patagonia and Danone who look to further their impact for good year after year.” Perhaps most importantly, the company is looking to help lead industry-wide changes for the better. “We think it’s important to talk about where we’d like to go, and we hope that others will join us on this journey.”
B the Change gathers and shares the voices from within the movement of people using business as a force for good and the community of Certified B Corporations. The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the nonprofit B Lab.
