Impact: How We Go Beyond

March is #BCorpMonth! This month is all about sharing how we go beyond as a B Corp and we have already begun. In our previous impact blog post, Why We Go Beyond, we talked about becoming a Certified B Corp and how it relates to our values. 

As a market intelligence firm, we believe it’s important to have the discussion about impact businesses because our clients may be interested in becoming one or may need to understand impact businesses to know how it will influence their market.

In this blog post we highlight the ways that CTRS prioritizes impact for all of our stakeholders. We hope it provides a good example to think about the implications for your business. 

What Kind of Impact Does CTRS Provide To Everyone Around The Business?

Impact: Our Customers

For our customers, we focus on bringing that impact lens to their projects. In our market intelligence, we often do a PESTLE analysis which incorporates a snapshot of the political, economic, social, technological, legal and environmental considerations in the market. By taking this approach, it covers a wide range of issues and can uncover topics that may never have been discussed before. This approach allows us to bake in impact considerations that may be relevant and important for our customers to know about their market.

Over the years, we have seen more and more customer segments state the importance of considering a triple bottom line and as a result, we believe it’s important that our customers understand there are risks to ignoring the social and environmental impacts of their work. We also try to encourage our customers to work with organizations in their communities that are doing ESG work, to amplify that impact. 

Impact: Our Staff

For our staff, we’re fully committed to treating our team really well by providing flexibility, meaningful work, and a fair wage. We are a Certified Living Wage Employer, and offer our team a wage that exceeds our regional standards. This was important to us because we wanted to offer opportunities to people for whom traditional Monday to Friday, 9-5 work is not possible. We wanted to offer a place of work so people who cannot work a full time job can still earn a good living and support themselves and their families. We provide these opportunities to people who don’t or can’t: for example, mothers who struggle to balance child care needs with the need to earn a living; people with health challenges; and new Canadians who are trying to get a foothold in our communities.  

We’re also thoughtful about the partners, vendors, and suppliers that we use to minimize our impact on the planet. We always try to do work with the people in the local economy, to support our communities. We make sure we work with organizations who are also impact businesses or who have demonstrated that they’re committed to the UN Sustainable Development Goals. 

Impact: Our Community

For our community, we are supporting organizations that are trying to make our communities and our planet better. We have a formalized policy at CTRS to give back to our community through our Designed to Give program, where at least 5% of our billable hours are directed towards supporting non profits who are working to help meet the UN Sustainable Development Goals. 

That means working with organizations who actively work towards educating and bettering our communities, socially, environmentally, and economically.

How Does CTRS Do Its Part To Make The World Better?

First and foremost, it’s people over profit. Not just our employees, but also the people in our communities. 

There may be businesses out there that think it’s easy to think about the environmental aspects. For instance, if you are a manufacturer, you can reduce plastic or waste. But for us at CTRS, we already have a small environmental footprint, so we really focus our efforts on social impacts and using our pro bono hours to support the environmental side. 

I think a lot of impact organizations are focused on the environment first and while we are a low environmental impact business, we are always looking for ways to further reduce our impact and more importantly find ways to support organizations who are aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals with our designed to give program. But we choose to focus on the social side of impact first because people in poverty don’t have the luxury of making better environmental choices. So communities that take care of their own, can better take care of the planet in my opinion. So at CTRS, we focus on strengthening our communities, so that we can all work together to save the planet. 

We provide amazing employment opportunities for people who sometimes face barriers to traditional employment. Also by making sure that whatever assets and knowledge that we have, are available to organizations that can’t normally access it that are doing good in the world, so that we’re supporting them and their goals to do good.

Our impact and purpose driven nature is more about who we are at our core and the way that we conduct business. 

Impact Associations

Certified Living Wage Employer

As was mentioned previously, we are a Certified Living Wage Employer. We became certified in June 2022, because we have always firmly believed in putting people first and ensuring we provide opportunities for all.

CGLCC Certified Supplier

In February of this year, we got the exciting news from Canada’s LGBT+ Chamber of Commerce, that we are now a LGBT+ Certified Supplier, or LGBT+ Business Enterprise (LGBTBE). Our founder, Aaron Cruikshank wanted to share this: 

“I have always resisted the narrative that our intersectionality as professionals is the reason that our clients hire us. I believe that the quality of our work and the value that we provide is the main reason why our business has grown and been successful. However, I have come to realize that there are many other business owners and clients out there that identify as “other” and seek solidarity with other people like them. Business owners should never be afraid to be 100% who they are when they are out in the community working. I hope that I can lead by example and help other business owners in the LGBTQ+ community.”

Real Leaders Impact Award Winner – 2023

Earlier this year, we announced that CTRS was selected as a 2023 Real Leaders Impact Award Winner. As an impact business, we actively look for ways to support and work with organizations who are doing good in the world. To be recognized by our peers in the B Corp community is an incredible feeling and we look forward to collaborating with other Real Leaders and B Corps across the globe.

How Do You Plan To Continue To Be An Impact Business In The Years To Come?

First off, we are fully committed to donating at least 5% of our work to nonprofits aligned with UN Sustainable Development goals through our Designed to Give program. We would love in the longterm to be able to increase that percentage, but we are also growing so that amount that we are giving gets bigger every year, even at 5% because of our growth. I still think that it would be wonderful to give back more than 5%, so we will definitely be working on that. 

We are also looking into ways to make CTRS even better for workers, with new benefits and opportunities rolling out all the time. 

We are also looking to do more work with clients who have values alignment with CTRS. We would especially love to do more work with Indigenous communities. We’ve done a lot of work with them in the past and it’s always super beneficial to the communities and everyone that is involved.

Be Apart of the Moment

#BCorpMonth is all about sharing and inspiring what it means to be a B Corp and how we go beyond to make real differences. We have been sharing our journey and our impact on LinkedIn – follow along to see more of our story and learn what it means to CTRS to be a B Corp. If you want to learn more about why we go beyond at CTRS, and how you can become a part of this community, check out our last blog post: Why We Go Beyond.