The B Impact Assessment

The BIA is the only tool that measures your company’s entire operations – from your supply chain and carbon footprint to your inclusion policies and employee engagement. 

The BIA provides your company with valuable, insightful data and is the best way to understand how you are performing today and how to improve your impact for the future.

Using data from the previous 12 months, you will answer approximately 200 questions within the assessment, with responses verified by B Lab's independent Standards Team. A minimum score of 80 points is needed to submit your assessment to certify as B Corp. It's rare for companies to achieve this score initially and most are subsequently required to make improvements based on the policies and practices highlighted in the BIA. Don’t worry, there is no such thing as failing the BIA, you simply go back and improve. 

If a company is using the BIA to achieve B Corp Certification, it must be a for-profit company, with at least a year of operations to meet the eligibility requirements. You can find out more about how to calculate your operational start date here.

The assessment is tailored to your company’s industry, size, sector and location, and while it can be completed by anyone within the business, it is a rigorous process which can require input from multiple teams.

Start-ups, with less than 12 months in operation, can use the BIA to achieve Pending B Corp status, rather than certify as a B Corp, in the interim. Large or complex businesses may be required to take multiple assessments and should get in touch with the B Lab UK team to determine their certification approach.

Find out more about our eligibility criteria for B Corp Certification here.

• Governance: code of ethics; financial information disclosure; whistle-blower policy; mission and engagement
• Workers: career development; health, wellness and safety; tracking satisfaction and engagement
• Environment: environmental management system; recycling materials; water, waste and energy usage
• Community: civic engagement and giving; diversity, equity and inclusion; supply chain management
• Customers: customer feedback or complaint mechanisms; regularly monitoring customer outcomes and wellbeing

Within each of these 5 impact areas, the BIA assesses impact in two ways: 

Operations: Most of the questions in the BIA relate to how your business operates on a daily basis. For example, how do you manage waste, provide employee benefits or audit your finances? These questions apply to all companies, independent of design or intent and are aligned with other best-in-class standards.

Impact Business Models (IBMs): If your business is already specifically designed to deliver high social or environmental impact, it may be scored on additional questions called 'Impact Business Models' (IBMs). These questions are rare and go a level deeper, measuring the ways in which your business creates a specific positive benefit or outcome for one or more of your stakeholders. This might be through your products/services, a particular process or activity, or the structure of the business (e.g. supply chain poverty alleviation, conservation action or serving those in need). 

To achieve certification, you will also be required to disclose any sensitive practices, fines or sanctions related to your company or partners in a Disclosure Questionnaire. This is confidential and, while reviewed, does not affect your numerical score on the B Impact Assessment.

Another part of the certification process is the B Corp legal requirement. This commits you to consider the impact of your decisions on all stakeholders, not only shareholders by building it into your company’s legal governance.

The first step is to complete all the questions to get a baseline score for your company’s current performance. The BIA is comprehensive and challenging, and so this process can take around three hours for a high-level review, to three weeks if you need to get inputs from across the business. And of course, this time could be further affected by the size, age and complexity of your business. 

This initial company score is rarely over the 80 points required for certification. The next step is then to review the improvement report and your score across the different impact areas to determine how to increase your score and, most importantly, your impact.

The questions in the BIA, along with B Lab’s free best practice guides and input from your employees are great sources of inspiration in identifying policies and practices that can improve your impact. Once implemented, the assessment can then be updated to reflect these positive changes.

When you reach a score of 80+ points and you have completed the confidential Disclosure Questionnaire, your assessment can be submitted to B Lab, marking the start of a rigorous review process leading to B Corp Certification.