boxxe to tie staff bonuses to sustainability as it eyes B Corp first

Microsoft partner aiming to be first UK reseller to achieve B Corporation accreditation as part of sustainability drive

Microsoft partner boxxe has spoken of the need to embed sustainability across its entire organisation and culture - right down to job specs and staff bonuses - after submitting its application to become a B Corporation.

The York-based outfit is aiming to become the first UK reseller to achieve the accreditation, which marks out companies which balance profit and purpose.

This follows the relaunch last July of boxxe Community, through which boxxe provide staff with paid leave to carry out charity work.

Tune into the CRN Tech Impact Summit and Awards at 4pm on 16 September to find out how Computacenter, Softcat and Jigsaw24 are tackling sustainable (free registration here).

Should its application be successful, boxxe will be one of the first UK tech firms - alongside Zen Internet - to achieve B Corp status, chief revenue officer Joel Berwitz (pictured) told CRN.

"When I first spoke to [boxxe CEO] Phil Doye about it, he wanted to drive sustainability as a core value of the organisation, and had heard about B Corp from in or around some of the investments he'd been involved with. At the time it was relatively unknown and was just finding its way over to the UK," Berwitz explained.

"In the interim two years, the whole movement has grown in Europe".

Linking bonuses to sustainability

B Corporations are encouraged to consider the impact of their decisions on their workers, customers, suppliers, the community, and the environment.

Talking to CRN, boxxe CFO Hazel Griffiths said boxxe is using B Corp as a "stepping stone" to embed sustainability across its business.

"If you're a listed company, you will probably have an ESG head or a governance board in place to review [ESG]," she said.

"But we were very keen for everyone to take responsibility for sustainability. We want it to be embedded into everyone's individual roles. For example, we are renewing all our job specs and are going to have some sustainability goals and have started to include ESG targets in our bonus schemes.

"It's about making sure we're all bought into the sustainability and ESG proposition, rather than have someone say ‘you're responsible for it, now tell us what we're meant to be doing'. It's more about saying ‘we're all in this together; if this is important to you, come on board and help us grow and develop it."

There are five different sections to a B Corp impact assessment, Griffiths explained. They relate to governance, workers, community, environment and customers.

The B Corp assessment criteria, which are rooted in American English, can be difficult to interpret, Griffiths conceded.

"To remove the ambiguity, we engaged with a company called Seismic," she said.

"[My advice to others] would be to engage with a partner quickly. We got a lot of value from working with Seismic as they provided clarity on what was required and how an assessor will review the assessment - it's like an audit check before you submit."

Collecting the data needed to fulfil the environmental component of B Corp is also time consuming, Griffiths warned.

"Having three sites and collecting all the energy usage for the last three years is quite a big data gathering operation, but once you've got all the data together it's quite a quick calculation," she said.

"The assessment forces you to look at your supply chain as well," added Berwitz.

"[The process] has probably highlighted a whole bunch of things disties and vendors aren't doing, that probably they should be doing if they were going for this type of accreditation. It does highlight that there is a lot of work to do in the channel for all organisations to be at the same level we'll be at from a sustainability perspective."

Recruitment benefits

In July, boxxe increased the number of paid days available to staff to carry out pro bono and charity work to 11.5.

"That's the equivalent to five per cent of the time of our staff," Berwitz said. "And in terms of the overall amount of days, that's somewhere between 2,500 and 3,000 days that we are giving pro bono to encourage them to use their skills and help other people," he explained.

"When it comes to speaking to new recruits, that's a massive benefit."

Lead times from submitting the B Corp assessment to accreditation are roughly between 12-18 months.

"But what we're finding is that having taken this approach, people are developing new ideas and going above what we need to do from a B Corp perspective. Sustainability is our goal, and we are measuring it by becoming a B Corp. It's a stepping stone to what we can achieve next."

Dave Stevinson, CEO of distributor QBS Software - which is gearing up to submit its B Corp application later this month - branded boxxe's move "the right thing to do".

"I have personally spoken to a good number of the UK's largest resellers and without exception all are massively improving their sustainability narrative and actions," he said.

"Certified B Corporation Status is a great standard to have and I would strongly recommend this to every reseller. Having taken QBS through the impact assessment I have a lot of knowledge that I am very happy to share with those in the channel."