No room to hide: Streets Heaver on B Lab's tougher new standards
Family-owned healthcare software company Streets Heaver has recertified under B Lab's new standards. CEO Benedict Heaver explains how the process ensures purpose is genuinely embedded, and why he wants the government to take notice.
Ask the staff at Streets Heaver what makes them proud to work there, and the same three answers come back. One is Fighting Fit: the company’s sponsorship of a Lincoln City
Foundation programme that helps people living with or recovering from cancer build strength and confidence. The second is their commitment to learning and development: every employee can spend 10 per cent of their working week building new skills and interests. And the third, but by no means the last, is the company's B Corp Certification.
This demonstrates what B Corp has become for the 40-year-old family business. Streets Heaver has doubled in size without increasing its carbon emissions. It has transformed £62,500 of community sponsorship into more than £300,000 of independently evidenced social value. It uses B Corp policies to drive improvements across its whole value chain. And more than one in five employees (21%) have been with the company for between 10 and 35 years.
More than planting trees
For Streets Heaver, sustainability has always been about more than the environment. The company has had solar panels on its roof for 14 years. It has also spent close to a decade on something less visible: its culture.
“For any negative impacts our business generated, we looked hard at what we should stop doing, while really focusing on our own people and how we could develop them too,” says Heaver. He credits fellow B Corp Vivobarefoot, who also just certified on B Lab’s new standards, as a personal inspiration.
The company uses the standards as a framework for every new decision or initiative. “They're our north star,” he says. “We first looked at B Corp Certification as a way to reaffirm our commitment to our employees. We’ve always set out to continuously improve, always trying to ‘be a little bit better’. The latest standards have pushed us even further.”
No room to hide
“The previous version of the standards felt enormous. This version felt even bigger,” he says. “It touches everything. It's a really rigorous process, and there's no room to hide. It has to be baked in at every level.”
Rather than a single assessment, the process involved an ongoing conversation with an independent auditor who examined every part of the business, and Heaver says the value was clear from the start. “They lifted up all the rocks,” he says. “It gave the whole process real gravitas.” The difference from other accreditations, he argues, is what happens to the business as a result. “With an ISO, the business doesn't change materially. You change your standard operating procedures, that’s it. Under B Lab’s new standards, everything changes. It's real systems change.”
JEDI is no longer optional
For Streets Heaver, the biggest shift can be seen across Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (JEDI). Streets Heaver has looked again at gender balance and recruitment, added more JEDI training, and built the principles into its company values.
“The more we’ve done that, the more diverse our team has become,” says Heaver. “Diversity of thought brings so much value. There’s a little magic in bringing different people together: you get more ideas, more solutions and more opportunities to innovate.”
Protecting human rights is also non-negotiable, both internally and in terms of Streets Heaver’s supplier base. “Before, our approach was quite generic. Now we have to be explicit and prove we’re upholding high standards across our supply chain.”
Taking the principles abroad
The standards have proved useful as the company considers international expansion, including in the Middle East and South Africa.
“We can take for granted the protections and expectations we’re used to in the UK,” says Heaver. “Working in another country means understanding its culture, respecting different ways of doing things and recognising what’s outside our control. B Corp gives us a clear set of principles to guide the choices we can make, from how we support our people to the quality of jobs we create.”
Pushing suppliers and community impact further
The impacts reach far beyond the company. Streets Heaver is proactive about sharing B Corp frameworks, requirements and policies with suppliers, encouraging continuous improvement across the whole value chain. “The process can be daunting, so it's about us supporting them as much as we can, and nudging them to be 10 per cent better,” says Heaver.
The new framework has also made the company's social value reporting more robust. Speaking about their partnership with Lincoln City Foundation’s Fighting Fit initiative supporting cancer patients with exercise and fitness opportunities, Benedict says, “This partnership is really humbling. It opened our eyes. While the project allows us to explicitly evidence our social value impacts, more importantly it’s emboldened us to do more.”
Additionally, the company has connected with local businesses it might never have met through its usual networks. Although they work in different industries, they’ve found common challenges and useful ideas to share. “It creates better jobs, helps people grow, and opens the door to things you couldn’t have planned,” says Heaver.
Why it matters
Heaver doesn't claim the new certification process is perfect. “It's not bespoke to every business’ unique context, and some elements remain challenging. But it's the best thing out there,” he says. “We wish the government would mandate all businesses to behave this way.”
He would also like the government to recognise B Corp Certification in the way it recognises ISO. “B Corp actually checks that the processes and the outputs are doing good. It's unique in that.”
He says clients value the independent, third-party-accredited proof, and it strengthens the company as an employer, especially with younger staff. “It shows everyone that we're doing what we say we're doing. For us, it's the most important standard.”
His message to the smaller B Corps facing the new standards is reassuring. “Nobody's trying to trip anyone up. Usually it's a knowledge gap or an interpretation gap.” His main tip is to make B Corp part of business as usual. “If you hit a problem, just go back to the standards.”
For a family business, he adds, the certification gives structure and reassurance that the company will keep operating according to its values. It also stops the business from standing still.
“It gives us confidence while keeping curious,” says Heaver. “It pushes us to run up the hill a little bit faster.”
