For more than 15 years 3Degrees has been enacting meaningful climate impact for businesses and their customers. Since 2012, we’ve been a Certified B Corporation, helping to prove that positive impact against a rigorous set of guidelines. When you’re searching for a career that makes a positive impact, B Corp status can be a great indicator that an employer is committed to their mission and values. Before we dig into what being a B Corp means for 3Degrees, it helps to fully understand what B Corp certification is and how it works.

The basics: what is a B Corp?

“B Corp” is short for Certified B Corporation, a type of corporation that is held to high social, environmental, and governance standards. The nonprofit organization B Lab started the B Corp movement in 2007 with the goal to “transform the global economy to benefit all people, communities, and the planet.” Ever since, companies like 3Degrees have joined the movement and embraced the pursuit of a triple bottom line: people, planet, and profit. B Lab scores businesses on the following items with a recurring assessment, which results in a B Impact Score to determine if they can become B Corps:

• Environment
• Community
• Workers
• Governance
• Customers

B Lab evaluates B Corps every three years to ensure they’ve maintained B Corp standards to continue to impact the globe for the better. Here’s a snapshot of 3Degrees’ B Impact Score:

How 3Degrees’ B Corp status impacts our employees

Being a B Corp helps ground and guide 3Degrees, and directly affects our employees and even candidates in our hiring process. One of the B Corp Impact measures is focused on employees, and in the midst of change and uncertainty, 3Degrees wants employees to be taken care of in the ways they need. Here are just a few of the ways our B Corp status shows up in strong policy and practice to support our employees:

• In addition to flexible paid time off and sick time, we introduced wellness days and a wellness benefit fund to make it easier for employees to take time for mental healthcare, preventative care, and other activities that promote personal wellness.
• We’ve improved the way we address bias in hiring, and require a comprehensive bias training for all staff involved in a hiring process. We also set a goal to diversify our workforce, building and strengthening relationships with external partners working to engage professionals with marginalized identities, while also collaborating with industry partners working to diversify the clean energy space in particular.
• We offer comprehensive training programs to support employee development, including a learning management system to make training more accessible to our distributed workforce. We also have an employee-led Staff Growth Business Resource Group, focused on peer-to-peer education and career development.

Giving back to the community as a B Corp

In a world of increased remote and hybrid work, employees are more connected to their local communities than ever. 3Degrees values community-centered work, and enables employees to take action where it means the most to them. We offer:

• Paid volunteer hours. 3Degrees wants to encourage and reward employees giving back, and will pay for eight hours of volunteering per year.
• Employee-directed donations – Each employee can request 3Degrees to donate up to $500 to a nonprofit that’s dedicated to helping the environment.

For a full picture of 3Degrees and B Corp, take a look at our B Corp Report.

3Degrees’ B Corp values are woven into every part of our operations and culture, and as a dedicated member of the B Corp community, we look forward to continued meaningful work for our people and our planet.