‘It takes hard work and devotion’: The Hallway achieves B Corp status
Indie agency The Hallway has officially become B Corp certified, cementing the agency’s commitment to its purpose. Speaking exclusively to Mumbrella, chief executive Jules Hall and chief creative Simon Lee explained that it is so much more than “just a shiny badge”.
The global benchmark, B Corp, is achieved when a business meets high standards of social and environmental performance, accountability and transparency.
(L-R): Simon Lee, Jules Hall
“We’ve got a responsibility at a corporate governance level to run our business in a way that is good for the people that work in it, good for the community, and good for the planet that we all share,” Hall told Mumbrella.
“Getting the certification gave us two things. It gave us a set of guidelines that we can use to optimise our business, and then an ongoing reporting framework to see how we’re progressing.”
Lee explained there are five key pillars under the B Corp framework: Governance, workers, community, environment and customers.
“When you first embark on the process, you start by doing a self assessment against all of those pillars,” he said. “And then you become aware of the areas in which you need to improve.”
The pair told Mumbrella that achieving B Corp status is a rigorous process that spanned over 18 months.
“It’s 18 months of hard graft and significant financial investment. And so you’ll only really do it if you are genuinely committed to doing the right thing against all the pillars, so any suggestion of one just wanting to do this to get a shiny badge, I don’t agree with,” Lee continued.
“There is no ‘just go getting a B Corp’,” he said.
While the agency has spent the past year making significant progress in becoming carbon neutral and implementing new staff policies including different leave rules, all while achieving fantastic commercial results for its clients and growing in size by 45%, Hall acknowledged there is still a way to go.
“I think anyone who embarks on this process needs to ratchet things up across the board,” he explained to Mumbrella.
“There were things across the five pillars we knew we needed to improve on. For example, in the environmental space, there were very clear actionable things like our energy providers, water consumption and carbon footprint.”
Lee said The Hallway exists to be “creative catalysts for a flourishing world” with the B Corp model enabling the agency to measure what they are doing to meet this ambition, but also hold them accountable for doing so.
The Hallway’s B Corp score
While some argue that achieving B Corp status just gives a business a shiny badge and ticks a box in ESG, Hall and Lee said it is so much more than that.
“Our hope is that is does become the norm, as people are increasingly wanting to work for companies that do think about something other than the bottom line,” Lee continued.
“They’re looking for companies that align with their own values, and consumers are also becoming more conscious of the values of brands.
“There’s a lot of positive reasons for a company to be B Corp certified, so it’s not a question of ‘oh we’ll just get it’, because it takes hard work and devotion.”
“We’re proud to be part of the B Corp community, and while we’re new to it, we intend to be active and play our part,” Lee concluded.
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Lauren McNamara is the associate editor at Mumbrella, covering the creative and PR beat. She joined in November 2022 as editorial assistant, after completing a Bachelor of Communications (Journalism) at UTS.
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