Last Updated: October 27th, 2022.
Committing to sustainable, positive progress
Here at Novoda, we’re determined to leave the planet a little better than we found it whilst taking good care of as many of the fine people we meet along the way as possible.
One of the ways we’re working towards that ideal is to make specific commitments that can guide us in creating practical positive change and making that measurable difference. For Novodans, our partners, clients, and all the other stakeholders that exist within our value chain.
Material Issues
As we’re working towards our B Corp certification right now, we’ve chosen to assess our commitments and principles in line with the 5 pillars of B Corp.
Pillar 1: Governance
This includes our commitment to a legal structure change within Novoda’s Articles of Association, known as a ‘Mission Lock’, and demonstrates that Novoda has chosen to pursue important social and ethical goals alongside its pursuit of profit. Novodas investors and shareholders (past and present) explicitly understand and accept this as stakeholders in Novoda.
This is a legal commitment to working in the best interests of ALL Novoda’s stakeholders. Our people, our suppliers, our local communities and the environment at large.
Pillar 2: Workers
We understand how vital our people (our workers in B Corp language) are to everything we do. From providing transformational help to our clients to working on our projects in pursuit of positive impact. This pillar enables us to demonstrate our commitment to ensuring our people’s career development, health & safety, wellness and prosperity.
Pillar 3: Community
We proudly support community impact projects with the time and energy we can offer – as with our employee volunteering programme – and continue to seek new ways to put this commitment into practice. Whether through partnership or direct community engagement.
We are also committed to addressing issues of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) that impact all of our stakeholders, as well as working to formalise our supply chain management in ways that ensure its ethical standards.
Pillar 4: Environment
We have evaluated all of Novoda’s potentially environmentally impacting practices across our day-to-day operations and our broader supply chain. Including a rigorous review of our carbon footprint followed by our commitment to SMART carbon reduction targets.
Pillar 5: Customers
Our customers are some of our most important stakeholders. They are our source of profit; they help us sharpen and refine our skills in practice and give us the resources needed to pursue our own positive impact projects too.
Here we have committed to meaningful customer stewardship. Regularly reviewing the efficacy of our services directly with customers, ensuring that we stick to the most ethical marketing standards and that our customer data protection measures are of an exceptionally high standard.
Our duty to act
Our beliefs stem from our desire to use our resources in the most sustainable way possible whilst using our knowledge, experience and expertise to contribute positively to maintaining all 5 of the B Corp sustainability pillars outlined above.
We acknowledge that sustainability isn’t only about environmental impact but includes consideration of (and positive progress on) social and economic issues too.
We believe we can provide quality, for-profit services to our clients while positively impacting the communities and stakeholders within our organisation’s sphere of action and influence too.
We believe we can do so whilst abiding by the guidance and regulations set out by external sustainability auditors such as B Lab and their B Corp certification standard.
We are committed to acting upon these beliefs.
Reporting on our impact
We have committed to continually monitoring our actions through a yearly Impact Report in line with the expectations of B Corp certification. This is a time-bound reporting process and a prerequisite for retaining B Corp certification over the long term.
We have also committed to regularly reporting progress against our sustainability commitments and making that information publicly available.
Should we make less progress than we have committed to over a given period, we will communicate this fact transparently. Then act to alter our strategy in ways that help us to make up any deficit.
This is a critical component of the ‘plan, do check, act cycle’ adopted by the environmental reporting standards framework Novoda is evaluating itself against.
