Showhouse has launched a ground-breaking initiative to help companies in the housebuilding and property industries become certified B Corps.
The Showhouse B Corp Academy has been created to educate businesses and guide them through the process of accreditation, helping them to prioritise people and the planet alongside profit.
The hybrid course will take place over eight weeks and be led by Showhouse’s environment editor, Ben Holden, who has plenty of experience guiding companies to B Corp accreditation.
The course will cover:
Week 1: Introduction and setting the scene (in person)
Week 2: Governance (online)
Week 3: Workers (online)
Week 4: Community (online)
Week 5: Environment (online)
Week 6: Customers (online)
Week 7: Embedding B Corp cultural change through internal + external communication (online) Week 8: Summary and roundup (in person)
Ben Holden said: “In each session, there will be a short amount of education giving an overview of the category and then guidance on the questions involved in each stage. We will progress through the B Impact Assessment together as a group, sharing and collaborating to help each other. At the conclusion of the course, companies will have a completed assessment and, providing you’re above 80 points, be in the position to submit your application for review.”
Each weekly session is £150 and will last no more than 90 minutes. It is advisable to earmark up to four hours of additional time per week to complete tasks and gather information from colleagues for the assessment submission.
Rupert Bates, editorial director of Showhouse, said: “Our new environment editor Ben Holden has guided several companies to B Corp status, including the Exclusive Collection of hotels and award-winning Sussex vineyard, Ridgeview.”
“Galion and Joseph Homes are two housebuilders who have completed that journey and it would be incredibly rewarding to set others along that path.”
Bates stresses that while B Corp certification is naturally a big achievement in itself, even if B Corp certification is not immediately attainable or practical, the learning process alone is immensely valuable as an education tool, burnishing brand reputation around environmental and social impact and a powerful recruitment driver for the next generation of employees, increasingly putting business sustainability at the heart of their career decisions.
Bates added: “The Showhouse Academy is open to industry leaders, as well as an opportunity for a company to put forward young talent to ‘graduate’ from the Academy and take their learnings back to the business to help implement positive change around the three pillars of people, planet and profit.”
Angus Macdonald, founder of Galion, said: “The Show House B Corp Academy initiative should be hugely welcome, not only to the SME developer but also the volume housebuilder and the entire new build supply chain. For those sitting on the B Corp fence, I would firstly say that it will provide an invaluable guide through the B Impact Assessment over the course of only eight weeks but, secondly, it will offer business leaders a microscopic viewpoint of their own company’s ESG credentials. Making a small change along the way might help you reach the all-important 80 points but, arguably most importantly, will move your business into a new, and improved era of commitment to the ESG movement.”
To register your interest in the Showhouse B Corp Academy, email Rupert Bates on rb@globespanmedia.com
