Size doesn't matter - your impact does. A Q&A with Sophie, Indicium's Sustainability Lead

In a previous blog post, we announced Indicium's intention to work towards B Corp certification. As we're in the middle of B Corp month, it was a good opportunity to update our supporters on where we are in our certification journey. Who better to ask than Sophie, who has been driving Indicium's B Corp progress.

Sophie Ross - the 'B' Keeper for Indicium

What is a B Corp?

Certified B Corporations (B Corps) are businesses verified by B Lab to meet high standards of social and environmental performance, transparency, and accountability. They commit to using business as a force for good, balancing profit with purpose. You can read more here - What is a B Corp?

Why did Indicium start exploring B Corp certification?

I've known about B Corp certification since researching social enterprises at the University of Tasmania, but it became more relevant when a client needed support with monitoring for their recertification. Personally, pursuing B Corp was exciting because, from Indicium’s inception, Mike and I had always valued making positive social and environmental impacts. As a tech start-up, our early focus was necessarily on viability, but now that we're more established, B Corp offered a structured way to formalise and communicate our mission. Given our business is built around measuring what matters, we also saw certification as a way to better understand the challenges our clients face in sustainability data collection and explore how technology can streamline this process.

Is it harder to become a B Corp if you're a small business?

Looking at B Corp's own statistics, the majority of B Corps are small to medium-sized businesses. This means that business size doesn't matter.

When we started talking about B Corp, we got many comments about how ambitious certification was for a small organisation—and I'd agree! Balancing B Corp work alongside my other work responsibilities (marketing, HR, staff wellbeing) has meant often losing momentum and needing to reorient myself, adding extra time to the process. However, our smaller size has actually been beneficial in many ways, allowing us to easily implement new policies and processes, with strong internal communication facilitating buy-in.

Navigating the B Impact Assessment was daunting at the start, but working with Tim at Grow Good helped to demystify the process, and they continue to provide support. We learned very quickly that fragmented management methods (spreadsheets, task lists, verbal requests) made the process of project managing certification quite clunky, and we moved to using Sustainability 360 software, streamlining documentation and task management.

A screenshot of Indicium's Sustainability Webpage outlining some of the data we gathered from clients about our solutions.

Currently, our key challenge is quantifying the impact our solutions have for clients. Often, we have limited visibility into how clients utilise our data, which complicates impact measurement. Improving how we capture and connect this data with client outcomes is an ongoing priority and something I'm looking forward to improving.

What are your thoughts on the criticism that B Corp is too lenient?

I’m very aware of recent criticisms regarding controversial certifications, inconsistent impact performance, and greenwashing concerns undermining the certification's credibility. This criticism is disheartening because most B Corps genuinely invest significant effort in ethical practices. At Indicium, we strongly believe in measuring what matters, and technology plays a crucial role in enabling organisations to effectively track, analyse, and improve their social and environmental performance. By improving transparency and accuracy in measurement, technology helps to reinforce genuine, impactful action. However, I’m confident upcoming changes to strengthen certification criteria will address these concerns and maintain the global community’s trust in the certification’s integrity.

Where are you in the journey towards certification? Is this your end goal, or is the journey itself valuable?

We have progressed through the initial evaluation stage, we're now waiting to schedule our verification interview. I'm feeling both excited and nervous - having never done this before I'm not sure what to expect. I know it will be rigorous, which is a good thing. The goal is to become certified, and we're looking forward to working with our verifier.

The new container system at the office for buying lunch - an initiative to reduce the amount of takeaway containers going into our landfill bin.

The journey to get to this point has significantly improved how Indicium operates. Regardless of certification outcomes, we’ve enhanced governance, employee management, and waste management practices, and developed a stronger awareness of our wider community and environmental impacts.

There's always room to improve, which means sustainability will continually guide our decisions. In fact, I'm working on a decision-making matrix as I write this - a tool to ensure that key decisions take into account our commitment to improve our social and environmental impact. As a growing small business, balancing viability with sustainability remains essential, but we’re committed to deepening our positive impact over time.

Where should businesses focus first when working towards more ethical and sustainable practices?

I've had conversations about this with business friends, and starting can feel overwhelming with numerous frameworks and opinions out there. Personally, I recommend the B Impact Assessment dashboard—even if you don't pursue certification, it provides a free and holistic overview of potential focus areas like governance, employee management, environmental impact, community engagement, and customer treatment. It’s an accessible, practical way to establish a baseline, identify priorities, and begin to make meaningful improvements.

So in conclusion, there are always things that a business can improve, no matter its size.

I'm always happy to speak to smaller businesses wanting to improve their sustainability - so if this is you - please reach out!

You can check out Indicium's Sustainability page here - https://www.indicium.cloud/our-sustainability

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