Happy Monday!
Ramadan Kareem and Ramadan Mubarak to our Muslim colleagues and loved ones. The month of Ramadan is well underway, and as Josh shared on Slack last week, non-Muslims can honor this month of humility and reflection by studying up on how to respectfully support observers this month.
This week's B Keeper provides an overview of what you can expect to happen next with the engagement survey results; covers a number of recent updates on important and exciting projects going on across B Lab; and announces our upcoming B Lab Global Wellness Week, May 24-28.
💖 Cassy
|
|
Dispatches from People & Ops
|
|
The engagement survey is closed. What's next?
The first engagement survey of 2021 closed a week ago (with 95% participation! 🎉) and we've hit the ground running since then. Here's what's happened in the last week:
- We finalized two focus areas that the P&C team will be targeting at the org-level over the next 6 months. Check out this Culture Amp article on the importance of finding focus.
- In addition to the two focus areas, Cassy has also begun suggesting ways the P&C and JEDI teams can use feedback from this survey to iterate on existing projects or workstreams (e.g. role clarity, performance evaluations, and remote work).
- Cassy began mapping out the non-P&C stakeholders who should use the survey results to iterate on existing projects (e.g. Enabling Objective owners, the TOC/Strategy/Structure working group, etc).
And what will happen next:
- Cassy will be presenting the results of this survey and P&C focus areas to the Management Circle next week. Ellonda will also be presenting the 2020 JEDI report based off of the Fall Inclusion & Engagement survey and focus groups.
- Cassy will be presenting the results of this survey and P&C focus areas to all Team Leads next week, after which Team Leads will be asked to share results with any managers on their team. P&C/JEDI will host an optional Q&A for managers in May.
- In mid-May, the P&C team will be sharing the engagement survey results alongside a few other pre-reads, including the 2020 JEDI report and a P&C report, in preparation for a JEDI and P&C co-hosted town hall on May 21 (calendar hold coming soon). This is also when we will announce our focus areas and the actions we've identified to address them over the next 6 months. Some teams may see/discuss results beforehand, but all staff will be able to review the survey results by May 17 at the latest.
The May 17 B Keeper will include everything you need to know to prepare for the P&C + JEDI town hall on May 21.
|
|
Wellness Week: Shifting beyond self-care to community care
SAVE THE DATE! May 24-28 will be Wellness Week at B Lab Global.
We know that our staff have endured over a year of immeasurable stress - the fear and grief of a global pandemic, physical and social isolation, personal challenges related to child/family care, racial violence and civil unrest worldwide - and all amidst ongoing organizational change at work. In response to that and in honor of Mental Health Awareness Month, the JEDI and P&C teams are working together to plan a 2021 Wellness Week that will give our staff a much-needed break and better equip us all to sustain our wellness over time.
This year's Wellness Week theme will be: "Shifting beyond self-care to community care." Shout out to Josh for the theme inspiration!
What does this mean, exactly? We often hear “self-care*” touted as a solution to stress and burnout, but many workplace environments do not create a conducive environment for staff to actually take ownership over their own self-care. True self-care is impossible to maintain without a culture supportive of it. To quote Brené Brown, "self-care requires a bubble of protection from other people who value your wellbeing at least as highly as you do.” That bubble of protection is community care.
Calendar holds for Wellness Week will be coming today and full details will be coming soon. In the meantime, check out the following resources:
* Note: "Self-care" was originally introduced as a political act in response to the failures of the white patriarchal medical system in the US, led by Black women leaders like Audre Lorde and Angela Davis, and its true meaning has since been distorted and diluted in modern discourse. Read more about the history of self-care here and here.
|
|
Update on Lead Executive Search
The second monthly update on the process to our next Lead Executive is now available.
Highlights from the update include:
- We have a new 6th member! Welcome Luana!
- Korn Ferry has been selected as our Search Firm.
- We are working on aligning the Lead Executive Search with Board Expansion
You can view more detail about the update in this Slack Post. Please check out this slide deck for the full update from the Search Design Advisory Committee + Andrew. If you missed the first update, you can view it here.
|
|
|
Questions for us? Submit a ticket (or use the lightning bolt ⚡on Slack!)
|
|
|
This digest is intended to highlight our work, share how it's making an impact, and help us stay connected to our vision/mission and to each other.
|
|
World Earth Day "Thunderclap" Coming on April 22nd
April 22nd is World Earth Day! The Global Network and the B Corp community worldwide will be celebrating together as a global movement.
Thanks to the support of B Lab US & Canada we have a great suite of assets for Global/Country Partners and B Corps around the world to share on April 22. Keep your eyes open on social media and reshare posts from us and/or your favorite B Corps!
|
|
BIA-IRIS+ Alignment
B Lab’s Standards Management team has been working with the Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN), another standards-based organization, to align the GIIN's impact measurement and management system, IRIS+, with the B Impact Assessment. This project is similar to what the Standards Management team launched with GRI in February of this year.
You can view a one-page explainer of the project here.
|
|
Performance Requirements 2.0 update
Following up on the March 24 session reviewing the Performance Requirements for B Corp certification, Susmita recently shared the analysis report of the Dec-Feb survey and highlights as well as some planned next steps on the project.
Here are some of the key findings from the report:
- We had good broad input from the community across the globe - with some limitations.
- Results indicate broad agreement that specific minimum requirements should be a component of the performance requirements for B Corp Certification.
- Results indicate that respondents value standards that are clear, that encourage continuous improvement, and that maintain a comprehensive approach to social and environmental performance.
You can view more information about the review, the upcoming workshops, and a link to the full report in this Slack Post.
|
|
White House Initiative on Inclusive Economic Growth launch
On April 7th, B Lab US/Can (alongside the U.S. Impact Investing Alliance and a coalition of more than 50 impact-oriented organizations) launched a proposal for an initiative calling on the Biden administration to recognize "structural reforms to capital markets and increased community investing" as "key to supercharging the Administration's efforts to address COVID 19 fall out, [the] racial wealth gap, and climate change."
There has been an overwhelmingly positive response to the launch of the proposal in the press. Here is a small selection of press coverage you can browse:
|
|
|
Is this section missing an important highlight? Tag us on Slack using #bkeeper or tell us directly.
|
|
|
Events & Opportunities
Storytelling for Social Change
Wed, Apr 28, 2021 6:00 PM - 7:30 PM EDT
Fee $35 - Consider using your Professional Development Budget!
Join acclaimed activist, speaker, and videographer Life Escobar for a virtual workshop from Be Social Change about the power of storytelling in social change movements.
World Earth Day "Thunderclap"
April 22 - Various Events
For more information, see the "Inside the Lab" section above.
Workshops for Performance Requirements 2.0
May 6, 11-12pm ET or 8-9pm ET
For more information, see the "Inside the Lab" section above.
Save the date: P&C + JEDI Town Hall
May 21, 9-10:30am ET
Details forthcoming.
Save the date: Wellness Week
May 24-28
Details forthcoming.
|
|
Resources & Reminders
|
|
Best for Last 🎉 Staff Passion Projects
Happy April! This month we'll be sharing some of our staff's "passion projects" outside of their jobs at B Lab, so we can celebrate their efforts, share our support, and get to know our colleagues beyond the "walls" of B Lab.
|
|
|
|
Name: Jasmine Jones
Team: Certification & Verification (Formerly Standards Review)
Project: Komplete Package - Instagram Influencer
Using Instagram more intentionally as a platform for content creation and influencing has long been a goal for Jasmine, who kicked that dream into high gear recently. Her guiding mission is to inspire and amplify representation for women of all backgrounds.
As Jasmine explains, "The beauty and advertising industry is rife with representations of Eurocentric beauty standards. People seem to forget or refuse to acknowledge that women of color, specifically Black women, spend billions of dollars each year on beauty and personal care products. And yet we are often left to deal with shade ranges that are not expansive enough or marketing that does not reflect diverse skin tones, body types or hair textures."
Jasmine aims to increase awareness and remedy the limitations of the influencer space by promoting diversity and inclusion in her content.
"Anti-blackness is insidious and shows up in ways that people don’t even really think about on a day-to-day basis if they don’t have to or aren’t of an oppressed experience," she said. "Makeup companies will legit make a foundation with 20 shades, with 11 of them being for people with paler skin, 4 for people with 'olive' skin, 3 for 'deep' skin tones and then 2 for the 'dark' skin tones."
And this lack of representation is not just a problem for beauty standards; it's a health concern as well.
"Some companies avoid even communicating that sunscreen is important to protect Black skin from cancers and skin damage just so they do not have to invest in making formulations that have to work for Black skin," Jasmine said.
You can support Jasmine by following along on Instagram! Her content ranges from redefining our beauty "standards" to be more diverse and inclusive to demonstrating how to incorporate sustainable luxury into all aspects of our daily lives (whether it be through the clothes we wear, the skincare products we use, or the wine we drink). 🥂
Check out @KompletePackage on Instagram!
|
|
|
Name: Jenny Langer
Team: Certification & Verification (Formerly Standards Review)
Project: Jenny Langer Yoga
As many of her colleagues know, Jenny has been a yoga instructor for many years - both before and while working at B Lab. Finding herself with excess pandemic free-time, she began taking additional training and soon realized that yoga was becoming more than a side project. As her manager, Claudia, announced to her team earlier this month, Jenny has recently decided to transition out of B Lab to pursue her yoga business full-time. Beginning in May, she will be transitioning to part-time for a temporary period while she begins to ramp up her budding yoga business.
Her decision came from the convergence of a few factors. First, she recently finished the aforementioned training, which helped her understand how her yoga practice can extend beyond meditative practice to actually providing a physical health service. As Jenny explains, "I know more about anatomy, I know more about movement, and I think I can use that to actually help people understand and care for their bodies."
Additionally, Jenny has also strengthened her understanding of business operations, thanks in part to her work at B Lab. "I've talked to so many businesses and that has helped me immensely in creating my own. My work at B Lab definitely wasn't a detour, it was a step along the way," Jenny said.
Jenny is currently teaching outdoor classes on Sunday mornings at 17th and Carpenter in Philadelphia, and she expects that schedule to expand as the weather warms up and her work at B Lab winds down. She invites all Philly staff to join her outdoor classes! Her schedule can be found on her website: Jenny Langer Yoga.
|
|
|
|
|
