Going Behind the B: an introductory training course to B Corp

The launch of this course is a really exciting milestone in our work to realise B Lab UK’s strategy and marks the next stage of our work to scale up awareness of the B Corp movement and engagement with our B Impact Assessment.

Since I joined B Lab UK back in April 2021, the B Corp community in the UK has doubled to over 1,200 businesses and we now have around 30,000 users of the B Impact Assessment. But to match our ambition to create an inclusive, equitable and regenerative economic system, we need new tools to help democratise and spread knowledge in an easy and accessible way. And this is where training steps in.

Training for all

Behind the B: an introduction to the B Corp movement is the result of a year-long research and development process, including stakeholder interviews, surveys and pilot testing. 

The course is designed for people who are completely new to the B Corp Movement and should be used as a starting point to learn more about the journey to certification. It’s split into 3 main chapters:

• What is the B Corp movement?
• What are Certified B Corps?
• What is the B Impact Assessment?

It’s been a collaborative effort involving our own experts across the B Global Network and the B Corp community, whose stories and insights have helped shape our content. In particular, I’d like to thank Graze, x+why, Y.O.U Underwear, MCM Design and DAME. who feature as case studies in the training.

We wanted to make the course free, online and on-demand to ensure it is as accessible as possible. Anyone taking the training can re-watch videos, pause and click through the additional resources at their own pace. It’s also editable, so we can update the content based on feedback and as our standards and processes evolve.

What’s next?

This is just the start.  We’re busy developing our next course which dives into more detail about the topics covered and using the B Impact Assessment to its full potential. We hope to launch this course later in 2023.

B Lab UK is also using this opportunity to review and redevelop its B Leaders programme – a training programme that equips sustainability professionals with the tools and knowledge to support businesses through the B Corp Certification process. B Leaders have been an integral part of the success of the movement so far and we want to continue recruiting more candidates as the community scales. We will release more information about B Leaders later this year. 

I wanted to end by thanking everyone for their time and energy to build this course and to wish you luck as you embark on the B Corp journey!