New Standards Consultation Summary Report Reflects Community Feedback on Draft Standards
Between January and March 2024, B Lab solicited feedback on the latest draft of the B Corp standards. Through an online survey and hundreds of focus group meetings, B Lab Collected over 16,000 pieces of qualitative feedback on the new standards. This feedback was summarized in the Second Consultation Summary Report released on September 24th. In response to this community feedback, B Lab has committed to making substantial changes to the standards, summarized below.
In an attempt to evaluate risk factors at the outset of the certification process and support prospective B Corps in managing these risks, B Lab has added more clarity on ineligibility thresholds for B Corp certification for companies in high-risk industries.
Impact topics Workplace Culture and Fair Wages will be unified into a new impact topic: Fair Work. All labor-related sub requirements will now exist within the Fair Work impact topic.
Complementary Impact Topics, proposed in the last draft of the standards as a new impact topic requiring B Corps to make and achieve improvement goals beyond the requirements of the core impact topics, has been eliminated as a standalone section.
More resources have been added for Scope 3 GHG emissions reporting for smaller companies.
Due to external factors, some companies may have difficulty achieving the goals laid out in their climate action plan, B Lab has incorporated more flexibility into this requirement and laid out alternative actions companies can take to meet these sub requirements.