Enfuse Group becomes certified as B Corporation
Digital transformation consultancy Enfuse Group has announced that it is now a certified B Corporation. The assessment measures a business’s ongoing impact on its workers, community and suppliers, customers, governance, and the environment.
Formed in 2015, Enfuse Group works as the trusted partner for digitally ambitious organisations. Working across the transformation lifecycle, Enfuse Group provides clients with a range of services from strategy and operating models to delivery and change management.
The company was recognised this year in the Sunday Times 100 fastest-growing private companies in Britain – with a 99.4% growth rate. Despite this exceptional growth, a release from the company keenly notes it “has not sacrificed its commitment to putting people first”, with a specific focus on employee wellbeing – supplying comprehensive benefits to enable employees to manage their health and wellbeing in addition to wellbeing policies that practically support a healthy work-life balance.
This approach to flexible working has been an important element in attracting and retaining talent – but it has also played a key role in obtaining official status as a B Corp. Enfuse Group has met B Lab's standards of social and environmental impact to join its community of like-minded companies, over a year of diligent verifications.
A statement from the firm added that Enfuse Group is determined not to rest on these laurels, and is “committed to continuously improving performance for clients, people, and for the planet”.
Graeme Curwen, CEO, went on, “I am extremely proud of this achievement and it represents a huge milestone for us at Enfuse Group. Harry and I started with the vision of building a high-growth, commercially focused consultancy that never lost sight of what matter most — our people, our clients, and the broader community, and we will continue to keep this commitment. This has been over a year in the making and I would like to thank everyone who made this happen.”
Enfuse Group has also used the news as an opportunity to wade into an on-going debate over what B Corp accreditation denotes. According to the firm, it has “always viewed B Corp certification as more than just a badge” – and see it as “a valuable opportunity to evaluate, evolve, and formalise their commitment to positive impact”.
The firm’s release added, “For Enfuse Group, the certification journey has been a chance to identify areas for growth while building on the strengths they already have. Importantly, it has helped document and create official policies for many of the initiatives Enfuse has long practiced, ensuring they’re embedded into the very fabric of how they operate. By embracing the process as a tool for meaningful change, Enfuse Group reaffirms their dedication to fostering both accountability and excellence in the way we serve their clients, support their team, contribute to their community, and the environment.”
The rise of B Lab
Founded in 2006, B Lab is a non-profit organisation is an organisation looking to certify environmental, social and governance standards with corporate entities around the world. To do so, the group created the B Corporation award. The accreditation process was established in order to unite businesses as a ‘force for good’, and analyses a company’s impact in five main areas – workers, community, environment, customers and governance. The team engaged with suppliers and employees across the business to consider the impact their actions have on each of these areas.
Initial uptake from the consulting sector was slow. But increasingly, as the sector acknowledged that it was facing what Re-Set co-founder and B Corp ambassador James Bidwell described as “an existential crisis”, consultants sought to reinvent their public image – rather than resting on their laurels. While consulting firms have long taken a lead when it comes to their own carbon emissions, their high-profile work with industry’s biggest polluters – and ties to state actors who have dragged their feet on climate change – has become one of consulting’s fiercest areas of criticism.
In the last four years, this has seen a growing number of the advisory sector’s biggest names signing up to be evaluated by B Lab, in the hopes of becoming a B Corp. And many have succeeded; Archus, Kin + Carta, Bip and 4C Associates, OC&C Strategy Consultants, and Campbell Tickell among them.
However, debate about what being a B Corp actually means has grown steadily in recent years. Some member firms argue that seeing it as a ‘movement’ is a mis-step, and that it is not a front for “systemic change”, but simply a means of showing a business’ existing ESG credentials. Others argue that it has been seen for too long as a “box-ticking” exercise, and needs to move beyond being an end in its own right.
