Earlier this year we celebrated a B Corp milestone, our first B Corp anniversary, following our certification back in 2023. Since then, we’ve been keen to keep the momentum up, focused on action and driving positive change in our workplace.
B The Change
This year, to increase engagement, align our passions and celebrate our successes, we’ll be holding our ‘B The Change’ event internally at the start of B Corp month. This will see our ‘B Keepers’ and Working Groups come together to discuss, outline and agree our strategy for another incredible year of positive change ahead. We’ll be sure to share the outputs of this event with you and we’re committed to communicating our progress throughout the year.
We’re keen to build on our Diversity and Inclusion agenda, our sustainability goals, and our colleague-raised topics in the year ahead. Within this, we’ll also be directing attention to key timely topics including: the cost-of-living crisis, women’s health challenges in the workplace and how we move to a more sustainable fleet across the business.
The Power of our People
Critical to helping us continuously make improvements and enforce change are our B Keepers who account for 15% of colleagues across the business. These team members are part of our workstream groups: ‘Inclusion and Well-being’ and ‘Sustainability and Communities’. These B Corp Working Groups were set up to enable individuals to be the spokespersons for the workforce, responsible for delivering new initiatives, policies, and ways of working following feedback from our annual employee survey. Last year, our group members tackled issues like mental health, personal development, and recruitment, and from this, they developed impactful measures and initiatives which included:
- Partnering with local wholesalers to offer all employees discounted access to essential household items.
- Organising an online Career Fair open to all employees.
- Launching a sustained mental health awareness campaign to educate employees on available health benefits.
You may have seen our annual B Corp Impact Report which we published recently.
We’re excited to see what this year brings for our B Keeper team and their collaborative efforts in creating more opportunities to support our people, communities, and the planet. From last year’s efforts, it’s clear that there is a focus on forward planning, bringing people into the room and celebrating success.
Our continued B Corp Journey
Long term, it’s all about how we continuously improve and reach our target score of 90 when it comes to our B Corp reaccreditation. Last year we became accredited by achieving a score of 81.6, and although we’re proud of this we know that through leveraging our efforts this year, we can get the business to where we want it to be.
Our B Corp strategy and actions are supported through other initiatives internally, such as pledging to become a Carbon Neutral business by 2030. Through this, we aim to introduce initiatives such as deploying electric vehicles across the business and ensuring that we’re working with like-minded suppliers to help us achieve this goal.
Our colleagues have also fully emerged themselves in our partnership with volunteering app, On Hand, enabling our colleagues to make a positive impact in their local communities in the ways which matter most to them. Through the completion of mission and their support in the last year they continue to help make significant emission savings, increased sustainability efforts, and improvements to their personal lives and those around them. This helps to give our colleagues an even greater sense of purpose as they tangibly see where they’re making a difference in the world at large and within their local communities.
Celebrating B Corp Month…
It’s just around the corner now, and whilst we kick off our B The Change event at the start of March, which will no doubt uncover additional activities supporting B Corp month, we’ve already signed up to support an event in collaboration with other Welsh-based B Corp companies for a day supporting environmental change and teamwork, which involved litter-picking across the country. Events like this enable us to harness the power and potential of like-minded businesses and help spread the word about the positive changes we can drive together.
Using Business as a Force for Good
With another big year ahead of us, Managing Director, Cathy Evans, comments on the highly anticipated events ahead: “Embracing our journey as a BCorp business brings forth a real sense of belonging to a vibrant community. This community comprises businesses driven by a shared passion to effect meaningful change, and we are excited and honoured to align with our fellow Welsh B Corp partners. Together, we aspire to leverage our collective strength to champion volunteering initiatives that resonate within our local communities. This collaboration marks a significant milestone for us, building upon our past experiences of impactful volunteering efforts, such as our partnership with On Hand at Tactical Solutions”.
“Our commitment to fostering a culture of volunteering and sustainability through partnering with On Hand has resulted in the establishment of the Tactical Solutions forest, where over 3,000 trees have been planted to date —an achievement that fills us with pride. Personally, I am immensely eager to witness the collective potential we possess as a community, united in our mission to effect positive change and celebrate the ethos of BCorp, especially during the awareness month of March”.
“Together, let us unleash the power of collaboration and amplify the goodness inherent in being a BCorp entity”.
As a business, we’re really excited about the next phase of our B Corp journey. We’re committed to progressing, delivering outcomes, and creating a significant influence in the spheres of social and environmental accountability. We’ve already made significant steps in creating positive change for our colleagues and communities, and we know that our efforts are being seen in making Tactical Solutions an even better place to work, with each passing year.
