Member News
Robson Laidler Accountants and Business Advisors, which has offices in Jesmond, Newcastle and Chester le Street, County Durham has been named a 2022 Best for the World™ B Corp™ in recognition of its exceptional positive impact on Governance.
Best for the World is a distinction granted by B Lab to Certified B Corporations (B Corps) whose verified B Impact Scores in the five impact areas evaluated in the B Impact Assessment — community, customers, environment, governance, and workers — rank in the top 5% of all B Corps in their corresponding size group.
Robson Laidler earned this honour because of initiatives such as:
- As a B Corp, Robson Laidler has amended its legal constitution and corporate governing documents to ensure consideration is given to all of its stakeholders in decision-making. At board level all decisions are cross checked to ensure that they provide value to all stakeholder groups and not to any social or environmental detriment.
- Robson Laidler has an overarching code of ethics with policies that cover sustainability, bribery, money laundering, GDPR, and anti-corruption. The firm instructs all staff on these policies and communicates changes regularly.
- All staff have full transparency on financial performance. This is shared with the management group weekly and with all the team on a half-yearly basis.
- As a company Robson Laidler publicly shares information on its purpose driven business strategy and carbon footprint and reduction plan on an annual basis.
- Team members’ job descriptions together with performance measures include social and environmental mission-related expectations. These include pro-bono individual time commitments to provide value to the community together with measurement against a checklist of values and behaviors that have social or environmental impact.
- Social and environmental performance practices are incorporated into employee training programmes, team lunch and learn sessions, induction programmes, and health and wellbeing campaigns. These social and environmental practices are reviewed, measured and managed on an annual basis.
Robson Laidler managing director Graham Purvis said: “At Robson Laidler we are beyond happy to share that we’ve been recognised as one of the Best for the World B Corps 2022 in the area of Governance.
“As all B Corps are already businesses that meet high standards of verified social and environmental performance, public transparency, and legal accountability to balance profit and purpose, this is a recognition that makes us incredibly proud!
“Our continuous commitment towards our Governance paved the way for this achievement. We owe our success to our hard-working team who have helped us to set the highest standards in our codes of ethics and social and environmental policies and in ensuring these are transparent and provide value to all our stakeholders.
“We will continue collaborating with the global BCorp community to improve and positively impact our people and planet.”
Every year, Best for the World recognizes the top-performing B Corps creating the greatest positive impact through their businesses. More than a badge of honour, Best for the World provides an opportunity for recognised companies to share knowledge, learnings, and best practices with the B Corp community and businesses outside of the community to encourage innovation and transformation across the business sector. The full lists are available at bcorporation.net.
The Best for the World recognition is administered by B Lab, the global nonprofit network that certifies and mobilizes B Corps, which are businesses that meet high standards of positive social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency.
Today, there are more than 5,000 B Corps across 80 countries and 155 industries, unified by one common goal: building an inclusive, equitable, and regenerative economic system.
"Each Best for the World edition is an opportunity to raise the bar for how businesses can and should operate to create real and lasting positive impact for their workers, customers, communities, and the environment," said Dan Osusky, Head of Standards and Insights at B Lab Global. "While no company is perfect and even the best companies can and should continue to strive to improve, the B Corps recognised as Best for the World can provide us all — standards setters, B Corps, non B Corps, and sustainability advocates — with inspiration on what true leadership in business can look like to make progress on addressing our current global challenges.”
B Corp Certification doesn’t just evaluate a product or service, it assesses the overall social and environmental impact of the company that stands behind it.
To achieve B Corp Certification, a company must meet a score of at least 80 points on the B Impact Assessment, an evaluation of a company’s positive impact, and pass a risk review, an evaluation of a company’s negative impact; change their corporate governance structure to be accountable to all stakeholders, not just shareholders; and exhibit transparency by allowing information about their B Corp Certification performance to be publicly available on their B Corp profile on B Lab’s website.
