Each year, Impression publishes its Impact Report to document the efforts we have made in the previous 12 months. This demonstrates our commitment to our “Business for Good” value and to make a difference to our people, our community and our planet.
This year was our first year as a B Corp™ certified business, which we are incredibly proud of. This also means that our Impact Report is a little different this time, as we’ve specifically focused on five different categories pertaining to our B Corp™ certification.
Our B Corp™ score
Governance
The plan
To ensure that the B Corp™ ethos is at the heart of our decision-making and we are honouring our commitment to our value of “Business for Good”.
What we did
Impact Report: Annually, since 2019 we have published an Impact Report on our website. This was before becoming B Corp™ certified and this report summarised activity in the following areas; social, our people, charitable giving and environmental.
Impact Team: We revised our approach to Impact and reworked our Impact Team to have pillar leads and voluntary support. We are proud of the achievements and outputs of this team for this year, including educational sessions on neurodiversity, breast cancer and mental health, for example, and organising wellbeing brunches, charitable donations and education on EDI topics. We also started a partnership with an external EDI consultant to support and advise us on our EDI journey.
Financial review and audit: We have worked with our accountants to independently review our accounts and prepare us for audit.
Goals for next year
Measurable KPIs: We plan to introduce measurable objectives (key results) as part of our Business for Good value, and review these at the Board level.
Corporate oversight: We have acknowledged that there is an opportunity to improve our level of corporate oversight, by expanding our Board to include non-owners and execs, and we will review our options in doing so.
Compliance training: We plan to introduce a learning management system in 2024 to assist with compliance training across the business, including anti-corruption.
Financial education: We plan to introduce an education program around shared financials to our employees.
Workers
The plan
Our vision is to be the best place for digital talent to transform their career, and this is what we are working towards achieving.
What we did
Invest in L&D: We introduced a specialist Learning & Development role into the business, to ensure that everyone has a learning pathway related to their own professional development. Therefore, the time spent on training has now increased per person.
Expand our policies: We have updated our policy documents to include policies around things such as women’s health, pregnancy loss and modern slavery. We have also strengthened our secondary parent leave allowance from 2 weeks to 4 weeks.
Flexibility: Throughout 2023, we have been trialling a 4.5-day working week, which concluded in December 2023.
Salary benchmarking: We have undertaken a salary benchmarking exercise, comparing ourselves to other similar companies. The results of this have been shaped into our reward approach for 2024.
Open feedback: We have introduced 360 feedback as part of our senior-level performance assessments in 2023, with a view to trial this and rollout further in 2024.
Goals for next year
Following the success of the trial, we will continue our reduced working hours per week.
We will also be investing in technology solutions to support our learning and development goals.
We will continue to engage our people in helping to shape our people plans, such as conducting benefits focus groups, an EDI survey and a learning needs analysis exercise.
Customers
The plan
Take proactive steps to continue to keep our client data secure against the backdrop of an evolving threat landscape.
What we did
Data privacy: Overhaul how we approach client data confidentiality: to better protect our client data and information, we implemented access-controlled cloud-based Google Shared Drives for storing data for each client account, thereby decentralising access to data and mitigating the risk of unauthorised access to client data.
Ethical marketing: Restricting where we place clients’ paid ads to avoid showing alongside harmful content.
Client feedback: We extensively seek feedback from our clients, from having monthly 1-2-1s between CS and client Point of Contact (POC) to 6 monthly phone calls with our CS Director to evolve our partnerships. We also have introduced Executive Sponsors to work with board-level POCs to develop the partnership beyond the service being provided. provided.
Goals for next year
Enhancing our security further: To bolster our security further, we will explore the use of endpoint detection and response solutions to protect us better as we continue to promote remote working.
Client feedback: We will continue to partner our clients with the Executive Sponsor role on all Tier 1 level clients in particular, alongside our other client feedback channels.
Environment
The plan
We have been limited in our scope to reduce our environmental impact.
Our offices: Our headquarters is leased, providing us with little opportunity to make environmental improvements, beyond changes already implemented.
Our remaining two offices are serviced – giving us even less opportunity for improvements, but also causing challenges in monitoring our energy usage.
Energy usage: In addition, as a business, we typically use little energy, so our scope for decreasing this is limited.
What we did
We introduced several environmental improvements over the last 12 months including;
Product purchasing: Recycling coffee pods and evaluating our options to remove their use, all cleaning and sanitary products are eco-friendly, removing the use of single-use plastics, purchased water bottles and encouraging their use.
Suppliers: Using local suppliers for office improvements, maintenance and providing refreshments for workshops, events and meetings.
Goals for next year
We plan to further review the opportunity for our leased and serviced offices to be accredited by a green building program.
We plan to introduce the measurement of energy/water/waste in our headquartered office.
Community
The plan
To be a business for good and continue to be mindful that everything we do has an impact: on our people, on our planet, and the wider community.
What we did
EDI consultant: We enlisted EDI consultant, Kasey Robinson to deliver a project around sharing a common language in EDI at Impression, resulting in a strategy developed for 2024
Charitable donations: We have made charitable donations to 12 different charities as of October 23, including Black Minds Matter, Mind, and Macmillan.
Inclusive activities: We continued with our Women’s Health & Men’s Mental Health brunches, and also held spotlight talks with Coppafeel. Partnered with E-commerce Pride, offered payday walks, had a wellbeing-focused summer party, corporate yoga and developed our community chat spaces to include a ‘sober squad’ and a ‘women’s health chat’.
Data & Analytics: As an initial step in measuring our success in building a diverse workforce, we are now tracking voluntarily submitted socioeconomic, race/ethnicity, gender and age data.
The percentage of our workforce under 24 and over 50 has increased to 14%.
The percentage of women in managerial positions has increased to 44%.
Goals for next year
To continue to deliver a calendar of initiatives, events, talks and fundraising that sit within our 3 impact pillars, CSR, D&I and Wellbeing.
We plan to particularly focus on our EDI strategy next year, becoming more action-based after finishing our work with EDI consultants.
Reflections and next steps
Looking back on 2023, we made progress in all five categories and have made improvements to our original B Corp™ score.
As outlined, we have a lot planned for 2024 and our B Corp™ certification will continue to be an integral part of our decision-making process.
We are also very determined to act upon the results and recommendations of our EDI audit, in partnership with the external EDI consultant. This will be a key focus for 2024.
We have our recertification goal to act as our ‘North Star’ and we will be back with another Impact Report this time next year to document our continued progress.
