This week our blog comes from guest writer Andrew Merrell, founder and lead journalist of The Raikes Journal who reported on the launch of the B Local group for Gloucestershire. This article first appeared in The Raikes Journal on 18th July 2024.

B Corp support group for Gloucestershire has lift off

The pending arrival of this group was flagged in June, and now it’s here - officially launched and of interest to anyone thinking of transforming their business into a B Corp or who has already made the journey.

This was the launch of B Local Gloucestershire, which took place at the QuoLux™ event in July - an event that began with some expert analysis of climate change and went big on the ability of businesses to make positive change.

“There are something like 40 B Corps in the county and we have put together a B Local support group for Gloucestershire.

“It is about networking and collaboration, but is also about supporting all accredited and aspiring B Corp businesses,” said Victoria Petkovic-Short, from B Corp accredited Beechurst Serviced Apartments, who co-launched the group.

B Corp businesses are part of a growing movement of companies verified by the organisation B Lab as meeting high standards of social and environmental performance.

The B Local county group is co-chaired by Camilla Barnes, of Better Business, Better World, Katharina Child, from Invivo Healthcare, Charlie Hayward from Optimising IT and Victoria Petkovic-Short.

Its aim is to create connections within the community around social and environmental responsibility within business, maximise the positive impact of the local B Corp community and raise awareness of the B Corp movement.

Justin Young, Operations Director, Cotteswold Dairy

During the evening of step-change, perhaps the most radical of ideas revealed came from major employer Cotteswold Dairy, which revealed it had investigated using prisoners as a solution to its staffing issues, with incredible results.

The counter-intuitive experiment started as the MBA project for its operations director, Justin Young, to look at whether such radical thinking really could help solve a degree of staff churn at the business. 

It was a followed by news of still more innovative thinking, this time from the University of Gloucestershire.

Dr Cathia Jenainati unveiled how the university was revolutionising its teaching within its Business School and School of Computing, to deliver graduates with an even greater armoury of knowledge and skills fit for the modern workplace.

And preceding all this there was Malcolm Prowle, professor of performance management at the University of Gloucestershire, an expert on climate change on the UK and its economy, who delivered his informed verdict on what lies ahead for all of us.

Prowle’s speech left delegates stunned.

This was QuoLux™ at work again, gathering its cohort and connections for another thought-provoking session led by its CEO, Dr Stewart Barnes, exploring concepts at the forefront of modern business thinking - and at the core of its own leadership development programmes. 

In Cotteswold Dairy’s case, the concept was ‘good dividends’ – how to deliver a business model that generates positive social impact in communities and the wider society through purpose-led leadership while also creating real business value.

It’s hard to think of a more dramatic and inspirational example of the model than his project - an attempt to find a solution to staff ‘churn’ at Cotteswold Dairy by taking on ex-prisoners. 

“Once we find a member of staff, it can be between four and six months before we really start to see value coming back into the business, and that is ongoing if people are leaving,” said Young, explaining that although the majority of the family-owned firm’s 460-strong staff across its main Tewkesbury site and six depots were long-standing, the business was up against a highly competitive marketplace that caused a persistent challenge.

“No matter what we pay or do, milk production is white coats and hair nets. It’s not very sexy,” he joked.

The impact of having to regularly fill those few positions was costing the firm in terms of replacing staff, in terms of training and also productivity. 

Jo Draper, Justin Young, Professor Malcolm Prowle, Dr Cathia Jenainati, Dr Stewart Barnes

What Cotteswold Dairy needed was a new pool of labour eager to work, eager for job stability, eager to learn and eager for opportunity.

What Young asked himself was ‘could prisoners, whose long-term sentences were coming to an end and who needed to re-enter society, be the answer?’.

Timpsons, the keycutting and shoe repair did it - and still does it - and it works. Why not Cotteswold Dairy?

There was just the small matter of the many challenges of how to introduce ex-offenders into a tightly-knit workforce and community with no detrimental impact while trying to run a business with a £90 million turnover delivering an incredible 100,000,000 litres of milk a year, like clockwork, 365 days a year!

“The other struggle we had with the idea is that as a traditional business, like all businesses, whatever we do has to provide good value for shareholders.

“The challenge was ‘how do you value something that does not have monetary value?’. The answer for us was in the Good Dividends model,” said Young.

The model demands a purpose-led approach and the parameters helped guide Young’s thinking and ensure the desire to ‘do good’ achieved that other vital outcome too - good business.

What he actually found when he finally introduced serving prisoners into the company on trial was the opposite of what you may think.

With their release on the horizon they appreciated the opportunity, embraced it and outperformed expectations. Their presence proved to be transformative in more ways than one.

Staff were consulted, concerns taken on board, a buddy system introduced, and a whole new training system emerged with incredible results - for existing staff and the newcomers.

The level of detail the firm tackled was immense.

The prisoners even received full pay, but with 60 per cent going directly to a victims’ charity, creating what Young called a ‘regenerative sense of purpose’. 

And as the company carefully felt its way with the pilot study, something else happened. 

Staff saw real value in the program and became thoroughly committed to its success - even enjoyed the responsibilities.

The emerging mentors were formally recognised in their roles. A new sense of purpose emerged adding to their sense of place within the business and that business within its community. 

And vital for Young, who needed to justify all this to the board of the family firm, the work being done made good business sense too. It was indeed producing those ‘good dividends’ - a positive impact on its community with quantifiable results visible on its balance sheet.

“We started to lose the churn. We measured the cost to the business of that in the region of £250,000 alone.

The board of Cotteswold was convinced.

And so, with the scheme now road-tested and successfully embedded into the business, and having worked with the individuals for a good length of time, Cotteswold was able to reach another ‘regenerative stage’ - offering employment upon parole from prison. 

“Post project we have up to 10 serving prisoners working in the business. They are gaining social skills to support parole opportunities,” said Young.

“We have two prisoners who have been released and offered full time employment, thus truly demonstrating the regenerative nature of the program.”

He added: “CSR is not something that you stick on a website as a statement. You can demonstrate CSR within the business and you can demonstrate stakeholder value to that business too.”

Dr Cathia Jenainati

And after that revelation, up stepped Dr Cathia Jenainati from the University of Gloucestershire with what at first seemed like an explanation of how the university approached its teaching methods, but quickly became clear was another grand reveal - and more proof of an emerging regenerative economy here in the county.

With her boss, vice-chancellor of the university, Clare Marchant, in the audience, the new head of the institution’s business school unveiled the plan - beginning with a revolution in how the business school will teach students.

It is a plan that stands in stark contrast to any in the sector who think the solution to the massive pressures on their financial and educational models - models that have been in place at universities for the last 100 years - is to tough it out and hope for the best. 

For Jenainati the time has come to admit that degrees that deliver students who’re specialists in one narrow subject is no longer good enough; that businesses needed more from graduates and students wanted something different too and were energised by news ideas. Education needs to deliver breadth as well as depth, be brave and move forward.

“When we ask students what they want to study we usually hear parents reply for them instead, saying ‘they want to study the subjects I studied at the universities I went to’.

“But that’s not what the students want, it’s not what business wants either and it’s not what we are going to do any more.

“We will no longer have a school of business that only does business. We will have a business school that also includes computing and social science.

“It has become necessary to have all three together. Only the likes of GCHQ will need absolute specialists,” she said.

Students will still learn their core subject, for example computing, but add in a choice of other subjects to multi-skill them for life after graduation.

Those extra elements might include some law, or HR, but more broadly an understanding of what social justice, sustainability and gender mainstreaming mean.

The latter (a critical and strategic approach for achieving gender equality) is something Jenainati worked on with the United Nations.

“It is about it not being enough to treat all women the same. You have to understand many factors, and that is a skill too. It will become part of the curriculum and it is relevant because it will become policy for companies very soon too,” she said. 

“We are going to help create students who can come straight out of university, with the qualification to get them their job, but the skills to have an impact right away.

“How great would it be for a graduate to start in your business and be able to be its sustainability champion and evaluate it in a meaningful way right away?

“The outcome of the curriculum we have designed will help produce socially aware and ethical business leaders.” 

The ideas left the room buzzing, restoring the optimism purposefully torpedoed by Prowle, the first of the trio of speakers, and his assessment of the impact of climate change on the UK.

Referring to his book, Global Climate Change: A Realistic View of the Future, his job had been to remind everyone why Good Dividends and a regenerative economy should be the goal, and to leave no one ignorant of the challenges ahead.

He did just that.

“The objectives of the UK Government is to achieve net zero by 2050 – temperatures rising by only 1.5 to two degrees.

“Can we achieve this? No. It is not going to happen. We are already close to 1.5 degrees.

“Experts think we will pass that in the next couple of years and it will still continue to rise,” said Prowle, who trained as a scientist before switching careers to economics and finance. 

Professor Malcolm Prowle

“Seventy per cent of the greenhouse gases arise from just 10 countries. That’s out of 197 countries in total. No matter what these other countries do to mitigate, it will not be sufficient. 

“If you look at these 10 countries, they have serious conflicts with one another. They cannot collaborate to achieve action on carbon emissions. 

“And I think what will happen is other countries will look at these 10 countries and say ‘why should we do anything?’. 

“What will happen? There will be storms, floods, heatwaves, desertification and mass migration. In rich countries, life will be difficult, but they will survive.

“For poor countries – which is most countries – it will be catastrophic.” 

Just to mitigate against a 1.5 per cent increase in temperature, he said, would cost the UK billions of pounds. 

What should businesses do? 

“You can get insurance, but there will come a point at which policies will probably not be able to cover the risk, or you can begin to save to help mitigate against the impact.

“Or you can assess the risk and vulnerabilities of your business, innovate, look at how you can achieve lower carbon emissions and transition towards that. 

“Can you avoid incurring future expenditure on climate change adaptation? Very unlikely.

“Should we reduce ongoing expenditure on climate change mitigation? Not necessarily, but it must have a business focus. 

“Climate change is not a distant threat, it is a present reality that business needs to address.”

If you would like to join us for our next B Corp-related event on Monday 14th October in Bristol, please contact us here so that we can send you an invite nearer the time.

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