Following the Beta and Alpha beta testing period of Version 6 of the B Impact Assessment, the public comment period formally started on Saturday, September 15th and will run for two months until Friday, November 16th. During this period, anyone who is interested may review and leave feedback on our draft by logging in to the B Impact Assessment and selecting opt-in to V6 Public Comment.[/vc_column_text][ish_image image=”4750″ size=”theme-half” align=”center”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row bg_color=””][vc_column width=”1/1″][vc_column_text]Version 6 of the B Impact Assessment features structural changes as well as updates and improvements to individual questions and metrics. Among the most notable changes that have been proposed based on the feedback received from East Africa:

• New questions go beyond anti-corruption policies and practices in order to assess how a company monitors its anti-corruption program and reports findings to various internal and external stakeholders
• Recognizing the difficulty, and questionable need, for smaller companies to have an external Board of Directors, as well as the fact that there are good internal practices related to governance, a new question has been added to recognize best practices beyond having a board of directors.
• More detailed questions on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion have been added around inclusive workplace practices and quantitative diversity questions have been disaggregated to create a more detailed, consistent, and globally relevant set of metrics. Age has been added as a source of discrimination.
• Per living wage benchmarks now available for more markets globally, the topic of paying a living wage has been added to the Emerging Markets BIA, and now features two separate questions about both family and individual living wages.
• V6 more explicitly acknowledges “community investments” beyond charitable donations.
• Question for large companies focused on support and training of suppliers to also include best practices when it comes to payments.
• A new operations section under Customers (Customer Stewardship) featuring questions on topics like Product / Service Warranties, Accreditations and Certifications, Satisfaction, Feedback and Complaint Channels, and Data Usage.

A more in-depth overview of these changes and other key changes in V6 is available here.

B Lab’s  Standards Management Team will host a webinar on October 18th at 11:00 am PT to inform users in more detail regarding the latest changes. If you are unable to attend live, please register and we will send you a recording.

Thank you for your support as we continue to improve our global standards!  If you have any questions, reach out to acgonzalez@bcorporation.net.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]