What did your company do for the world last year, and how big part of your business does it correspond?
We measure our impact on workers, clients, communities, and the environment. As a B Corporation, we do this using the B Impact Assessment (BIA), which the independent certification body checks.
To us, the BIA is the best toolbox for measuring if a company is causing more good than harm. It asks the real questions, such as: if the company shares all financial information with its full-time employees; how many times more the highest-paid worker receives compared to the lowest-paid full-time worker; what % of the company is owned by workers and management?
The BIA would catch any company just trying to make their business look nice.
As with everything there is always room for further research and development. We were first B certified three years ago and currently going through reassessment. One thing that we noticed – back then and now – is that BIA recognizes payments for charity but not as much the payments for tax and social costs.
These payments deserve a closer look as they contribute to the wellbeing of society greatly. Why not be transparent about it? In our Sustainability Report 2018, we published for the first time the size of the tax and social security payment in relation to revenue in one simple chart (see below).
In our Sustainability Report 2018, we published for the first time where our cash goes.
This year we have hired two trainees to further study this topic. Sofia Nelson will draft our annual Sustainability Report, where we look at our impact on all stakeholders. Maj Lundström will study Finnish and Nordic companies in comparison to their global competition to find out how much they contribute to society in proportion to their revenue. This simple ratio we named the Nordic Key Performance Indicator (v1.0).
Now let’s go back to the question where we started: “What did your company do for the world last year, and how big part of your business does it correspond?” Out of our €1.433.363 revenue, we contributed 22 %, meaning a total of €313.076 to the society. Our Nordic KPI (v1.0) was 22%.
So, what is your Nordic KPI?
Interesting and eye opening. Btw how did you calculate the income tax on salaries, as it is dependant on the receiver’s total income?
We should get more companies to do this.
Thx, Wilhelm Rosenlew
Thank you for the question. We took from our book keeping the amount we withheld as income tax on behalf of everyone with a contract of employment with our company. You are right that dependent on the receiver’s total income withheld tax rate varies, still this simplification we feel sheds light on our total contribution as a company running its operation. Same logic we used for social security costs.