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Join for freePosted: Mon 24th Aug 2026
Are you a solo, micro or small business looking for certification to provide a competitive advantage, evidence your social and environmental credentials, or win private and public sector contracts?
Have you looked at B Corp and felt it was not a good fit for your small business? Or are you a B Corp and feel you do not want to recertify, as the new process is even more challenging?
In this Lunch and Learn, Jill Poet explains why the Responsible Business Standard is the perfect alternative to B Corp for small businesses, or for any organisation wanting to stay ahead of the competition.
The Responsible Business Standard (RBS) is an ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) framework developed in conjunction with, and validated by, Anglia Ruskin University. It includes UK legislation and best practice in six sections.
Most importantly, the RBS was designed very specifically to be suitable for small businesses from a sole proprietor upwards. Every small business is unique, not big businesses, just smaller. The Responsible Business Standard embraces that concept.
The importance of independence: Who manages and assesses RBS applications?
Overview of content and costs
How to get audit-ready
An exclusive offer for Enterprise Nation members
Jill has a background of working with small businesses, as well as launching businesses of her own, including a small supermarket in the mid-80s and a health and wellbeing portal that is still operational.
Jill is passionate about small businesses and loves to help them thrive. She is equally passionate about the potential small businesses have to create positive social, environmental, and economic impacts.
Jill co-launched the Organisation for Responsible Businesses in 2010. In 2022, she and her co-founder husband gifted the company to the membership.
Jill is still the CEO of the new member-owned, not-for-profit company, now supported by a wonderful female-led board of directors.
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Lightly edited for clarity.
Caitriona: Hello, everyone, and welcome to today's Lunch and Learn. My name is Caitriona, and I'll be your host today. For those of you attending a Lunch and Learn for the first time, Enterprise Nation is a vibrant community platform for start-ups and small businesses.
I'm pleased to introduce Jill Poet, who's the CEO of the Organisation for Responsible Businesses. In this session, Jill will explain why the responsible business standard is the perfect alternative to B Corp for small businesses, or for any organisation wanting to stay ahead of the competition.
If you have any questions throughout the webinar, please post them in the chat, and we'll do our best to answer them at the end of the session. Today's webinar will be recorded, and we will send a follow-up email with the recording and further resources later today. Over to you, Jill.
Jill: Thank you very much, Caitriona. Hi, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. As Caitriona says, I am the CEO of the Organisation for Responsible Businesses, and this session is about the small business alternative to B Corp.
So, not an alternative, but the alternative – designed very specifically to be suitable for tiny businesses like most of you on this call today. And when I say businesses, I mean any type of organisation. So we are looking at the responsible business standard.
I will urge you: if you are looking at any sort of certification, whether it's an alternative to B Corp or whatever you're looking for, there are two things to consider – independence and transparency.
If you are working with a consultant and they have a framework for certification, that's absolutely fine to do, and to get a certification at the end of it. But it's not independent – you've worked with that person, you've paid them consultancy fees, and they've certified you.
So the value is more internal to you than external, and I have seen quite a lot of this sort of certification popping up.
As I say, there's nothing wrong with working with consultants, but do consider what you actually want. And also consider transparency. To be clear, none of this relates to B Corp, because B Corp is independent and transparent, although independent in the sense of being owned by a big US company.
I've also seen websites that talk about some sort of certification, but you can't find any information whatsoever – you haven't got a clue what's included. To me, that immediately shows up as a red flag. So consider those things if you're looking for any sort of certification.
So what makes the Responsible Business Standard independent and very transparent? It's owned and managed by the Organisation for Responsible Businesses, and it was developed in conjunction with, and validated by, Anglia Ruskin University.
So there's clear validation behind it, which is really important – it's not just about us.
It was developed very specifically to be suitable for solos and micros, as well as larger businesses. So it wasn't developed as something for a big corporate and then cut down to size, as most other certifications are – it was developed to be suitable for you.
And interestingly, it was launched in 2011; we were way ahead of the curve.
At that time, when we were talking to small businesses about some sort of certification, the reaction was, "What? Why would we want to do that? What's that got to do with us?" So we put it aside for quite a long time and focused on our membership, before picking it up, dusting it off, and moving it online fairly recently.
So who is Orb? The Organisation for Responsible Businesses is member-owned, not-for-profit. It's primarily a membership organisation, but we also offer training and certification, all designed to drive a better way of doing business.
Small businesses are actually leading the field, driving a way to do business that sets an example to the corporate world and beyond.
So we're not a consultancy, although we do work with a lot of consultants – if you need any consultancy support, we can certainly signpost you to one of our members.
If you look at our website, you'll see there's loads of information. We do aim for complete transparency – actually, we're probably more transparent than we even need to be.
Most importantly, all responsible business standard applications are assessed by two independent auditors.
They're trained by us, obviously, because they have to understand our processes and approach, but they all have their own unique businesses. So what is a responsible business standard? It's an ESG framework for UK-based small businesses.
And I say businesses – it's actually for any type of organisation. If you were a social enterprise, a charity, or a community group, you could all consider this. So ESG stands for environmental, social, and governance.
Now, that's three separate things, and they all fit together and work together – you don't pull on one without thinking of the implications for the others. I know a lot of people have thought it's just environmental and social, with governance only covering those two bits, but no – it's governance in its own right.
When you're looking at big organisations, they tend to think of governance in terms of the board, and stats on equality and diversity, and a whole load of things like that.
There are overlaps, but actually governance is how you run your business on a day-to-day basis. Are you operating efficiently? Do you meet and exceed legislation?
Are you profitable? All those things drive your business on a day-to-day basis. That's why we call our ESG framework a place where the head and the heart collide.
It's about doing all the things that are good for people and good for the environment, and the social side, which is really all about people. That's about your people, if you employ anyone, your local community, and people in your supply chain that you might never meet, but whose lives the goods and services you buy might impact.
It's pushing all of that together because, ultimately, doing good is good for business, and it will give you a huge competitive advantage.
Now, to stress our approach, because this is really important: our approach is called ASTI. It's a bit wonky – I promise you I haven't been on the Asti, I don't actually like it, it's a bit sweet for me, I'd have champagne. But if you want to buy me something, champagne will do nicely.
Think of ASTI when I'm talking about some of the things we cover, because it's so important. But what does it mean? It means appropriate to the size, type, and impact of your business.
When you go through the framework, we want you to think about what's appropriate for your business – not a benchmark that we've put in place that may never be appropriate for you, or that you could never reach. That just doesn't make sense.
Every question that we ask, we want you to think about: am I doing enough? Could I do a bit more, and what would that look like? That's really important, and it's how we want you to think, and how our auditors are trained to think too.
So when they assess the process, that's how they are viewing it. We ask open questions throughout the certification, so consider something like well-being in the workplace.
If you haven't got any employees, that's not relevant to you – you can tick "not applicable," and that won't have a negative impact on your potential to reach certification, because we work on a percentage basis.
If you have two employees, it is relevant to you, because you should be considering the well-being of your people. But, obviously, with two employees, we're not expecting you to do huge amounts. What we'd expect from someone with two people is going to be different from what we'd expect from someone with 20, or 200 – obviously, that will be entirely different.
So we'll basically say: tell us what you're doing to support the well-being of your people, and answer the question appropriately – not just a couple of words, answer it properly. And it's evidence-based.
I will stress here that, because we are talking about the alternative to B Corp for small businesses, it doesn't mean it's easy. It's still comprehensive, it's still robust, and it's still evidence-based – you will have to do a bit of work.
But because it's appropriate for you, it's achievable – it's absolutely achievable. It's not policy heavy, which isn't to say we don't like policies; obviously, there are times when you absolutely need to have policies. But we don't ask for a policy on every single thing that might not be relevant to your business.
And again, we want the policy to be appropriate. So if you need a health and safety policy because you've got employees, it still might only be a couple of paragraphs. If you were to submit something a mile long that you've drawn as a template off a website, it might look really good at first glance, but when you dig a bit deeper, you'd find it's not relevant.
You'd be marked down for that, because you need to be thinking about what's appropriate for your business, and what you actually put in place. Plain English throughout, so it's not complicated, and no complicated statistics either. So these are all the things that help make it appropriate for your business.
So let's look at the content overview, which includes UK legislation and best practice. We call best practice "striving for excellence," and it is striving, because it's an ongoing development – we don't expect you to be perfect. We're all moving forward, and things change; your business shouldn't have to change, but what's expected of you will.
So it's all very fluid. Now, let me remind you of ASTI before I put up some of the things that are included, because there's a lot there, and some of it won't relate to your business. Or you might look at it and think, "I can't do that" – but it might not be relevant, and you can put "not applicable."
You can bring something down to a perspective that works for your business, so don't go into panic mode. It doesn't show all the questions – some are grouped, and some are missed out.
I'm going to go through this quite quickly, but just to give you an idea of how much it covers, so you can start to realise how beneficial it is for you.
Workplace has six sections, so we'll start with the first three. If you have employees, this section applies to you. If you don't have any employees at all, and you work from a home office and it's just you, the whole of this section may not apply, and you can put "not applicable" and move on to the next bit.
But let's quickly run through it. We want to see that you've got mechanisms in place for all the starter legal requirements, and anyone who employs people knows that's a lot. And, of course, you might not have any employees now, but you may be thinking of employing people, or you're in start-up mode and can be looking at this too.
So we'd be looking at whether you've got the right-to-work procedures in place, the right documents, and copies of them. Have you got employer's liability insurance, which you need to have straight away?
Main contract terms, discipline and grievance procedures, and a workplace pension are all things you'd need to have properly documented before you even employ anyone.
Equality and diversity sits in the workplace section, but we're looking at companies that have an approach to equality and diversity across everything they do. Health and safety – I mentioned health and safety policies – you need policies and risk assessments.
More HR policies, because there are certain policies you'd need to have in place when you first employ someone: you have to have discipline and grievance policies in place. But think about all the other HR policies you might like to have as well.
While I say we're not policy-heavy, in the workplace it's a good thing to have policies, because it helps people know what's expected of them. If you haven't told them, they don't know if it's okay to go outside and vape, or what they can do on social media.
So think about having the right policies, and it's a good idea to have a handbook where not only are all your policies there, but your values are included too.
Have you got proper facilities for the induction process and training? Training should also include self-development for your people. Do you have some sort of system for appraisals?
Now, that's not the horrible corporate annual thing that frightened the life out of people – it's just a way of making sure there's a regular meeting with your people, to check they're happy, address any issues, and help them develop and meet your expectations. How do you engage and motivate for well-being? We've got benefits and rewards.
That doesn't mean you have to be offering benefits and rewards – sometimes the best reward is just to say thank you, but tell us if you do. Working from home is important to cover, since so many people do that.
And with subcontractors and freelancers, although you haven't got to have the legislation in place, you certainly need that same sort of relationship, and, most importantly, to be sharing your values.
When we look at the environment – and this is a broader look at it – do you know the legal requirements? The general requirements are probably quite light for the majority of service-based businesses, though there might be specific legal requirements for your sector. Have you identified those impacts, and have you got an environmental policy?
We like to see an environmental management system, and don't panic – I'm not talking about ISO 14001. It could just be a small spreadsheet that identifies your impacts and what you're doing to address them, and looks at some form of genuine carbon reduction.
I'm not talking about "net zero," but genuine carbon reduction, and that might just be small steps.
We've got energy, materials, packaging, waste, and water. Water – if it's just you in an office, we're not going to ask you how much water you use for your cup of tea and flushing the loo, because obviously that would be ludicrous. It all has to be appropriate.
Transportation: how can you drive environmental improvement in your supply chain, and are you looking at that when you buy things? If you have employees, are you engaging them? And importantly, are you communicating your objectives?
In the marketplace, how do you deal with your customers and suppliers? Do you understand, and are you keeping up to date with, the general legislation that's appropriate for your business? Being a member of an organisation like Enterprise Nation can certainly help you with things like that.
Insurances: do you need things like public liability insurance or professional indemnity insurance? Have you got the right day-to-day processes in place? Because even if it's just you, you need to have processes, or you can go off on a tangent.
What do you do to make sure you're providing your customers with the best service? How do you deal with vulnerabilities – is your website okay for people with vulnerabilities to use? Have you got restricted sales?
Payment policy is a big thing – are you paying within 30 days, no longer than that? And how do you deal with your suppliers? You might not need a bribery and corruption policy, but do consider ethical purchasing.
Community: are you aware of what's happening in your community, and do you get engaged? Are the key people in your business getting engaged, and are you employing or engaging employees where you can?
Local sourcing can sometimes be challenging, because as small businesses, it's often hardware and software from big companies – we know that, we get that, just tell us.
And can you do anything to support youth? Maybe an hour of mentoring once a month is something you could do. Philanthropy, in general terms, is anything you're doing without expecting remuneration for it.
In the certification, we're talking about financial philanthropy, and our view is we're not expecting every business to be in a position to make financial donations. If you can, tell us; if you can't, then you can mark that as not applicable.
Ethics and values are very much about communicating your values, bringing your values into the company, and promoting responsible business, creating a virtuous circle so your business is actually needed and of value in the first place.
The supply chain, once again – make sure your company information is displayed.
And business continuity: other insurances and data protection are a big thing. Have you got a business continuity plan? We live in such volatile times.
It's really important to consider what would happen if something happened to you – if there was a fire, or the kind of weather circumstances we've had recently, or all sorts of other things. Just sit down and really think about it.
We don't look at your finances and ask for figures or reporting, but we do want to know that you've got systems in place to make sure you're doing all the right things.
So, very quickly, the process: we start with a six-week facilitated ESG course. It's suitable for any size, sector, or stage of business or organisation, and covers the framework and a whole lot more. There's a whole lot of resources, signposting, and tools that you can use.
It's a standalone business course, so you can do it even if you have no intention of doing the certification. But if you do want to do the certification, you are required to do the course first, because it makes sure you have a deep dive into every aspect of your business operations – something that, as small business owners, we don't always take the time to do.
The course runs in small cohorts and is also CPD-certified for nine points. The process is a short intro, followed by six one-hour sessions, and in between you'll work through each session in your own time.
Importantly, the course includes all the certification forms, so you can see exactly what will be required. It gives you the opportunity to get audit-ready without additional consultancy fees. The majority of small businesses going through this course will not need to look for additional consultancy support, unless you've got a slightly more complex business.
And there's no need to make a commitment to certification until you are absolutely ready. Course cost: the normal cost is £150, and our members get it for half price. There is also a special offer for Enterprise Nation members – a 40% discount for courses starting this September and October.
As I've said, the course provides all the next forms. If you decide you want to do certification, you pay for the appropriate certification model, which starts at £375, and that's payable every three years, not every year.
That enables you to access the platform, so you can upload your documents, complete forms, answer all the questions in detail as appropriate for your business, and provide evidence to substantiate your responses. And as I've already said, we work on a percentage basis, so if a question is genuinely not applicable, it will not negatively impact your potential to attain certification.
Once you submit, we will briefly overview it – and it is a brief overview, so if it looks as if someone hasn't put in enough evidence, we won't pass it on to an auditor. The first auditor assesses on the ASTI basis, and might ask you for more information, before it's passed to a second auditor.
Once their assessments are complete, you're then asked to put a three-year development plan in place, and you'll have to submit annual updates. Businesses with five or more employees, not including directors, are also required to have a culture check visit.
It's just a quick visit, because you can't check the culture of a company with policies alone – you need to go and feel, and see, and talk to people, to find out a bit more. These are the costs you'll see, and the first-year costs are very staggered: the course is a one-off payment, certification is every three years, and there's an annual fee for admin.
You will be required to have membership of Orb once you're certified, but you can take it out at any time. The first-year cost isn't overtly high, but it's when you look at the three-year cost that you really see how affordable it makes it.
Again, those are the discount codes you might like to have – perhaps, Caitriona, you could pop those into the chat – but you will get all this information. So, sorry to rush through it, but there was a lot to cover! Thank you for taking part.
If you want to connect with me and speak with me, I'm easy to find on Enterprise Nation – I am Jill Poet. Do you have any questions?
Caitriona: I'll pull that up on my screen. I was just going to say, we should switch back to the other screen as well, so people have a moment to note down the link you shared.
Okay – sorry, it's not playing nicely with me.
Jill: No problem at all.
Caitriona: There you go. Lovely, thank you – we'll just keep that up for a moment in case anyone wants to note it down. And we've had a question come in from Chris as well, which I'll ask you now.
Let's start with this question from Chris: are there peer-to-peer opportunities to share how to execute and explore changes and improvements?
Jill: Sorry, Caitriona, could you say that again?
Caitriona: Are there peer-to-peer opportunities to share how to explore changes and improvements?
Jill: That's very much part of the process of being on the course – that's why the course is so powerful, because there will be up to eight individuals on it. And that is the whole point: that peer-to-peer engagement of challenges, ideas, and experiences.
We used to have the course as something you could just work through on your own, but we realised people didn't deep-dive properly, and without that peer-to-peer engagement, it didn't have the same power. It really does make a difference, so absolutely. And if you're a member, there are always other members you can speak with too.
Caitriona: Thank you. Bridget has a question: would you ever consider making a group or space for those who have taken the facilitated ESG course?
Jill: That's an interesting question. I suppose the answer is that it's something I might invite them to do – if someone who's done the course would like to set up a WhatsApp group for people to share their experiences and support each other through the certification process, that would be great.
It's probably not something we'd get involved with directly ourselves, because we work very hard to keep the costs as low as we can. But it's a good way for people who have gone through the course to have that additional peer-to-peer engagement and support.
Caitriona: Thank you. Another question here: what are the most common gaps or mistakes you see when small businesses prepare for assessment?
Jill: I'm not sure there is one common thing – it does vary so much. But it is that deep dive that's so important, and having the confidence to actually think, "This is how it works for me, and this is right for me."
It's a bit like going back to school: answer the question. I suppose that's a generic tip for anyone taking any sort of exam, which I suppose this is – make sure you're actually answering the very specific question, and don't go off at a tangent.
Caitriona: Thank you. We're nearing the end of the session, so if anyone has any final questions, please do pop them in the chat. I'll share this lovely feedback from Hayley: she says, "This is fantastic – I don't know how I didn't know about this before. Thank you."
We can wrap on this question: if a business has very limited formal ESG policies or documentation today, where should it start?
Jill: Start by going through the course, and begin putting the pieces together. There are lots of resources in the course – one of those is what we'd call an ESG reporting framework, or something like that, which gives you a starting point to begin building it.
It comes back to frameworks and templates – be careful that you're not looking at something that isn't totally relevant to your business. But by going through the course, even if you don't want to do the certification, it will really help you identify what's relevant to your business, what's important, and what you need to focus on most.
And it will help you find a way to put a policy, or information, on your website – and we love to see people doing that. It's really important, because so many people I speak with are doing great things and have great values, but they're not talking about it.
So please, please, please – and I mean it, it's probably something to have another Lunch and Learn on – talk about it. The keyword is authenticity, always authenticity.
Caitriona: Thank you, that's a great way to end the session. Thanks so much for your presentation, Jill, and thanks, everyone, for joining us today. We'll be sharing the recording and further resources in a follow-up email this afternoon.
Jill: Thank you, everyone. Thank you very much, Caitriona.
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