What a B Corp™ Actually Is
A Certified B Corporation is a business verified as meeting B Lab Standards for social and environmental performance, transparency, and accountability, across governance, workers, community, environment, and customers.
Certification isn't something you can purchase. Organisations must meet a strict points threshold and provide evidence to support every claim they make. The assessment examines how a company operates, not what it says about itself.
For nonprofits choosing partners, that level of accountability matters.
Why We Pursued Certification
There's a lot of lip service out there. Plenty of companies talk about their values, publish the language on a website, and leave it there. We wanted to know whether ours would hold up when someone independent came in to check.
The idea wasn't new. Christi had floated B Corp certification years earlier, in one of the first conversations about what XP should stand for. No client asked for it and no tender was riding on it. Asked whether something forced the timing - a deal we wanted to win, scrutiny we were under - the answer was no. It was simply what Christi wanted XP to be. A values decision, not a business one.
"My word is my bond. Somebody is validating that what we are doing is ethically correct."
Christi Moller, CEO
That got more important as we grew across New Zealand, Australia, Canada, and India. Good practice looks different from one country to the next, and a company working in four of them can end up with four versions of the same value. Certification gave us one standard to hold everywhere.
"Good is in the eye of the beholder. Ethical standards are different in different countries. This brings us to a high common denominator when it comes to our values and how we operate."
Christi Moller, CEO
The Work Behind the Badge
Marsha Moller, GM Corporate Services, led the assessment. Her first discovery was how much more was involved than she initially thought.
"I significantly underestimated the standards, the requirements, but more importantly the evidence you needed to provide," she says.
The platform itself was easy. The evidence was the work. Every point XP claimed had to be backed by documentation, and the assessors took nothing on trust. "We're great at the fluffy stuff," Marsha says, "until they go, show me."
Some of it reached further than anyone expected. To meet the environmental criteria, XP had to bring in an external, NZ-certified body to measure the air quality in the office, on top of the real plants, the anti-glare blinds put in for people's eyes, and the air-conditioning filters cleaned every year. There was a catch familiar to any modern employer: most of XP's people work from home, which is better for the environment on almost every measure, and yet the same assessment wanted to know how you monitor the air quality of dozens of separate home offices. Doing the good thing turned out to be easier than proving it.
The most useful work came from the places where XP already did the right thing but had never written it down. Procurement was one. XP had no formal procurement strategy, so the process forced one, including an honest look at its own supply chain. Much of XP's Microsoft licensing runs through a large global distributor, and under the standard a supplier that isn't locally owned or owned by a minority group earns no credit. "You're feeding the big beast," as Marsha puts it. The answer wasn't to tear up its suppliers overnight. It was to document where XP stands and why, so the position belongs to the company rather than to the two people who happen to hold it.
Throughout, Marsha could have taken the easy route. Any question XP couldn't yet evidence could simply be marked "not applicable", no points, but no work either, and certification was still within reach. She refused. "I've got this in place, I just don't have the evidence. So let's build it. Let's create it."
Her CEO noticed. "We could have taken a lot of easy outs," says Christi. "Marsha went the other way and said, we have this, let me go get it."
None of this changed who XP is. It made XP prove it, and write it down, so the values are tangible and measurable rather than a matter of trust.
Who We Really Did It For
When organisations achieve B Corp certification, people often assume the goal is to signal something to clients or the market. For us, the motivation started much closer to home. Asked what he would say to a nonprofit leader who wanted to know why the certification mattered, Christi Moller was clear:
"First thing is, I did not do it for them. I did it for us."
Christi Moller, CEO
For Marsha Moller, the purpose is equally clear. The certification reflects XP's commitment to the people who make the organisation what it is.