The Goal
Become a Certified B Corp by the end of 2019
The Blog
We’ve decided to bring you along our journey to B Corp for a couple of reasons. One, in an effort to be transparent, we were planning on releasing the company procedures/policies/reports that came out of this B Corp certification at the end anyway, but, instead of just dumping them onto the interweb all at once, we thought, why not bring people along for the journey of how we got to this place? Two, we have no idea what we are doing or how to do this, so hopefully, at the end this blog will be a resource for other businesses looking to join the ranks of B Corp-ness! Three, this is RIVETING STUFF GUYS!
Our goal is to post monthly about our progress, wins, challenges and pivots!
Why B-Corp Certification is important for Field House
If we become a B Corporation, we join a community of great businesses & projects that we’ve always looked towards for inspiration & insight, including Patagonia (we wear their clothes), Kickstarter (we used them to crowd-fund our tasting room), Method – People Against Dirty (we use their soap in our bathrooms), and also other inspirational breweries like New Belgium, Aslan & Persephone (yay BC!).
To be certified, you have to show that your business is designed, operated and committed to achieving triple-bottom-line impact. That means People, Planet & Profit.
We want to continue to make Field House a great place to work for all of our crew members, minimize our impact on the environment and our local farmland, and create a positive social and economical impact in our local community. The eventual certification will recognize that we, as a team, have done enough and worked hard enough that we can be recognized within this community with the triple-bottom-line goal.
We’ve set an ambitious goal to be certified by the end of the year – and we’re gonna see how far we can get. But we will be a B-Corporation no matter what.
The Specifics
We are judged in 4 key areas of our business: People, Community, Environment & Governance. We need to score 80 out of 200 points to be certified, and we get re-graded every few years to ensure we’re keeping up.
We’ve decided to start with PEOPLE! This is an area that we’ve put a lot of effort into already, so it makes sense for us to start here.
We’ve gone through what B Corp requires and have chosen what makes sense for us and broken it down into three lists.
Items we ARE doing and ARE documented and ARE in place to review:
– Hiring & On-boarding Process (just needs reviewing, and adding anything that’s missing)
– Crew Handbook (Field Guide – this does need a review + upgrade to include some things i.e. diversity, inclusion, code of ethics, discrimination, pay + performance issues, grievance + complaints, support process, benefits, etc…)
– Role Outlines for all positions (need to finish Tasting Room crew, Canteen crew, and shift leaders)
Items we ARE doing but AREN’T documented and AREN’T in place consistently:
– Annual Engagement Survey tool & process
– Process for involving non-leadership roles in strategic/development planning
– Ongoing training & development program + engagement/involvement tracker
– Scheduling process/policy
– First Aid policy, processes, and tools + incident recording
Items we feel are the best opportunities to pursue right now (ie. AREN’T doing and AREN’T documented, but make sense for us):
– Crew member review & collaborative feedback process (in-the-works)
– Formal complaint process (anonymous tips & in-person)
– Health & Safety Policies, processes, and tools
– Paternity/maternity leave program
– Employee benefits program
– Health & Wellness program
– Community Involvement encouragement program
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Our plan is to keep you updated monthly on the challenges, wins, and pivots of going through this process. Feel free to get a hold of us with any questions.
xo The Field House Crew
