Putting Workers First: A Roundup of Employee-Focused Practices and Business Models

From Six Best For The World: Workers Honorees

B The Change
B The Change

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Certified B Corporations are redefining success in business to be those companies that consider their impact on all stakeholders — workers, the environment, the communities in which they operate. The businesses most successful at building in supports and protections for employees have made B Lab’s Best For The World: Workers list.

The Best For the World: Workers honorees have scored in the top 10 percent of all Certified B Corporations on the Workers section of the B Impact Assessment. It assesses the company’s relationship with its workforce and measures how the company treats its workers through compensation, benefits, training and ownership opportunities provided to workers. The category also focuses on the overall work environment within the company by assessing management/worker communication, job flexibility, corporate culture, and worker health and safety practices.

We asked several Best For The World: Workers honorees to share their insights and practices that have improved their positive employee impact.

Atomic Object

Grand Rapids, Michigan

Atomic Object creates applications for web, mobile, desktop, and devices. The custom software design and development firm helps companies innovate and grow with custom software products that are beautiful, reliable, and easy to use.

“As a company that prides itself on experimentation as a strategy and openness to new ideas, Atomic Object has adopted or built several practices that support the workplace and employment experience. Atomic Object is 100 percent employee-owned and practices open-book financial management.

“Atomic’s leaders have developed an annual compensation adjustment process to ensure competitive and fair pay across the company. In the software field, what should ideally be 40-hour workweeks often consume more, uncompensated time at work. To combat this trend, all Atoms are paid hourly, based on their individually tracked time.

“In 2003, Atomic created SoftwareGR, a nonprofit trade association dedicated to building and supporting the software development community in West Michigan. SoftwareGR runs events like BitCamp, through which middle-school girls learn the basics of software development. Atomic formalized its philanthropic giving outside of SoftwareGR with an employee-run sponsorship program in 2016.”

Kinesis

Portland, Oregon

Kinesis is a marketing and business consultancy firm that helps small to midsize business owners develop a systematic process to marketing, branding, web design, lead generation, customer retention, and sales. This is all part of a philosophy called Marketing From the Inside Out — a marketing approach that targets the core of a company and gravitates outward.

The Kinesis team volunteering with Habitat for Humanity, sporting one of the company’s core values : “Think Big!”

“Marketing agencies have a reputation for being extremely fast-paced, with a high rate of burnout. Industry-wide, annual employee turnover is estimated to be upwards of 30 percent — almost twice the national average — and growing by double digits every year. We decided to combat this by creating a happy and engaged company culture.

“We do this in a few ways: paying fair salaries substantially above the living wage and market comparisons, creating structured career paths to enable us to promote from within, and working tirelessly to build a team that is made up of people who are smart, engaged, and care as much about each other as they do about the work. Our next major milestone will be developing an equity sharing program for employees.”

CauseLabs

Denver, Colorado

CauseLabs is a socially conscious innovation firm that leverages web and mobile technologies to build custom digital tools that positively impact people. The company’s goal is not to simply deliver technology, but to approach problem-solving from a human-centered perspective. CauseLabs understands that problems are often part of a greater system and tools are used by people. Both must be evaluated and considered to result in sustainable solutions that create long-term impact.

Delaney Community Farm is a partnership between Denver Urban Gardens and Project Worthmore. Together, they serve refugees by farming together, growing food, providing education in sustainable farming, and fostering community. This photo was taken on a day a few CauseLabbers teamed up with several other B Corp members and applicants to give back. They worked the fields alongside some the very people that this farm benefits.

“Despite being a completely distributed team (or perhaps because of it) we have built a culture of trust, respect and transparency alongside a playful energy. We tackle some of the world’s most challenging problems, so it’s important to be mindful, and to encourage and support each other both in work and in life. We have great benefits, but team loyalty and tenure is most likely linked to the meaningful work we get to do each day and how it impacts the world around us.

“Aside from their daily work tasks, employees are also involved in community volunteering and CauseLabs offers a flexible schedule to accommodate these community commitments.

“The majority of our clients are nonprofits and social enterprises. We are proud to partner with like-minded companies and take on an abundance mindset so that we can solve the world’s challenging problems together. It is one thing to commit to better social and environmental practices as a company. However, educating our employees and allowing them to be champions and advocates for these practices has helped us improve more substantially.”

Schoolzilla

Oakland, California

Schoolzilla is am education data-management platform that turns achievement and operational data into interactive reports. As a public benefit corporation, its mission is in its bylaws: enabling people to use data to improve education for students, especially students from underserved communities.

Data Champion Summit 2018 hosted by Schoolzilla.

“We at Schoolzilla take our organizational values seriously and embed them in all that we do. We honor our teammates weekly by sharing anonymous feedback, setting up a compensation structure that reduces bias, and doing performance reviews every six months.

“We create opportunities for Zillas to learn more about each others’ identities, diversify our recruiting pipeline, and prioritize product features that will catalyze productive conversations about equity gaps in schools.

“Every two weeks at Schoolzilla, we gather as a company and report where we are on our two primary metrics — one financial, one impact — and the aligned subgoals. Each team shares what’s working well, what they’re doing next, and asks for ideas and input from the rest of the company.”

Myplanet

Toronto, Ontario

Myplanet is re-energizing how people connect in the workplace. The company partners with the world’s leading telecommunications providers and workplaces to design, build and orchestrate the experiences of their daily work. Myplanet is committed to fostering an inclusive and accessible environment. The company is dedicated to building a workforce that reflects the diversity of its community.

“For us, the single biggest area of success has been how we work to be best for our workers. We believe that being a force for good starts from within, and our staff team is essential to that. Every single full-time team member at Myplanet is an owner or option holder, because we’re committed to keeping the company employee-owned. It’s part of what influences our culture and instills that sense of pride and commitment to ongoing collective improvement.

“Our Fellowship program not only supports the broader community in tech by sharing knowledge out and growing the skills base of all involved, it also supports a more diverse community in the tech industry by connecting directly with a diverse group of students each time. And it supports a closer connection between the tech community and the civic community by solving challenges faced by local charities.

“Listen to your employees. They’re the heart of your business and hearing what matters to them means not only you are paying attention to their needs and concerns, but the whole organization will be aligned on the values driving your mission forward. To come into the office (or onto the factory floor or out into showroom — wherever your business is) and know everyone is on the same page, that everyone feels heard, and that everyone is excited about the ways they can continue to help drive progress is a powerful thing. And that can only be achieved by recognizing what motivates your team and empowering them to make changes that matter.”

Artisan Dental LLC

Madison, Wisconsin

Artisan Dental is an independent dental practice that aims to optimize the health and happiness of its patients, team members, suppliers, community and the planet through quality care and sustainable business practices. It offers a preventive and restorative dental health membership plan, a quarterly wellness and community building series, and an oral products recycling program.

“In the case of compensation design, we think about enhancing the nine capitals — psychological, human, health, spiritual, knowledge, social, cultural, natural, financial — at the level of the individual team member and how they reverberate into the team members’ family and community.

“Some of the more unique practices include our Whole Person Development Grant, which is a block grant of $250 to allocate to the development of any of the nine capitals. We also provide a $70 reimbursement for quarterly body work of any type and offer a series of personality assessments linked with journaling exercises to promote self-awareness and facilitate team building and team effectiveness. Other benefits include free personal financial planning and a socially responsible 401(K) investment option.

“Broadly speaking, offer opportunities for people to grow and develop interior-oriented qualities and capacities. In the business world, measurement of outcomes is oftentimes focused on exterior dimensions because they are more tangible to the five senses. However, much of what supports and enable exceptional leaders, cultures, and companies arises from inner qualities.”

Find all Best For The World honorees and stories on B the Change.

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.

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Published by B Lab & the community of B Corps to inform & inspire people who have a passion for using business as a force for good. Join at www.bthechange.com.