One year of B Corp at BaseKit
Here at BaseKit we’re celebrating one year of becoming a B Corp. An international accreditation that recognises that businesses meet high standards of social and environmental performance, transparency, and accountability.
It all started as an idea from our internal Green Team; a group of employees committed to finding innovative and progressive ideas to implement across the business to become more environmentally friendly.
After 12 months of hard work, we reached a score of 86.2. Meaning we were a fully fledged certified B Corp company, and had joined a movement of thousands of companies globally reinventing business by pursuing purpose, as well as profit.
We’re so proud of how far we’ve come since bringing the idea to life back in 2022, and here are some of the things we’ve achieved over the past 12 months, since becoming a B Corp.
Impact Report
Every year we are committed to sharing our Impact Report which brings to life the work we have done and the impact we have made throughout 2023.
We set a target to reach an unaudited improvement impact score of 100 and we were really proud to have finished 2023 with a total unaudited impact score of 100.3.
Over the last 12 months we’ve made progress across all areas of B Corp. Read our full impact report here, but here are some of our highlights:
- Climate Perks Policy launched to reward employees for choosing to travel more sustainably.
- Officially became an Includability employer, joining the Includability family.
- Planted 25,259K trees and offset 331.56 tCO2e through our partnership with Ecologi.
- We donated £13,171 to help our local community, including supporting our Charity of the Year – FareShare South West.
B Corp Hackathon
For our inaugural B Corp Month 2024, the BaseKit team got together and took part in a B Corp Hackathon; a day of brainstorming, planning and presenting ideas on how we can improve our B Corp impact score and bring in new purposeful initiatives for our people and the planet.
We split into four groups, covering different impact areas – workers, community, environment and customers. At the end of the day, the entire team came together to share their most exciting ideas through a presentation, and the team with the highest scores from these three categories would have the opportunity to implement the winning idea into the business.
There were plenty of brilliant ideas from the day; with one team creating a new API process that allows us to plant trees to offset AI carbon, and another introducing Learning & Development Ambassadors to promote the importance of training whilst at work.
We even had ideas about further simplifying our product to ensure underserved customers can get online even more easily, and plans to pay it forward through school visits, a BaseKit apprenticeship and supporting tech education for minority groups, to prepare the next generation both locally and globally, to thrive in tech.
The enthusiasm and passion from everyone was unprecedented and we’re excited about what the future holds as we roll out these ideas, and many more for the future.
Mental Health & Wellbeing Team
Mental health is super important to us here at BaseKit and in 2023, we introduced our new Mental Health & Wellbeing Team.
A group of individuals who are passionate about helping the wider team feel good mentally, and want to implement new activities and ideas on how to keep mental health and wellbeing at the forefront of everyone’s mind.
Six of the team embarked on a journey to become Mental Health First Aiders, with the primary objective of providing support to every member of our BaseKit family, regardless of their emotional state. The two day St John Ambulance Mental Health First Aid course has equipped our team with the confidence to identify signs and respond effectively to mental health needs.
After completing a Workplace Wellbeing course in the autumn of 2022 with Rener Wellbeing, we introduced our new Wellbeing Champion, Rae! Rae’s profound passion for sports and the positive impact it has on mental health inspired her to help our BaseKit team experience the same benefits.
BaseKit Mental Health Promise
The team also recently introduced our own BaseKit Mental Health Promise.
Five commitments which we pledge to stand by as a company, all to help the team feel included and safe to speak about their mental health.
It’s been an incredible first 12 months being an accredited B Corp and we’re so proud of what we’ve achieved so far for our employees, the business, but also for our community.
Keep an eye out for more B Corp updates and what we get up to into 2024 and beyond on our blog.