There’s a version of running a business where you keep your values in one drawer and your commercial strategy in another. You talk about doing good in your annual report, and you talk about revenue targets in your board meetings and you quietly hope the two never have to meet each other.
Share this post
We’ve never been able to do that. Not because we’re especially virtuous, but because the organisations we work with. When your clients exist to improve lives, reduce inequality, protect the environment, or advance public wellbeing, there is no credible version of your agency that isn’t trying to do the same thing. It is one of Ave’s founding principles, and the relationships we have with our client partners demand it. And frankly, the people who choose to work here demand it too.
That’s why signing up to the Better Business Act felt less like a decision and more like a formalisation.
What the Better Business Act actually asks for
The Better Business Act is a campaign to change Section 172 of the Companies Act 2006, the piece of legislation that currently requires company directors to act in the interests of shareholders above all else (betterbusinessact.org). The campaign argues, persuasively, that this legal framing is a structural barrier to sustainable, responsible capitalism. It asks Parliament to amend the law so that all UK businesses are required to balance the interests of people, planet and profit, not as a nice-to-have, but as a legal duty.
It’s worth being clear about what this isn’t. It isn’t anti-profit. It isn’t a soft commitment to corporate social responsibility of the kind that gets announced in a press release and forgotten by Q2. It’s a structural argument that the way business law is written actively prevents businesses from doing what more and more of them say they want to do, operate in a way that creates genuine value beyond the balance sheet.
We signed because we agree with this.
Accreditations as evidence, not decoration
The logos you might see associated with our business aren’t collected for optics. Each one represents a specific, audited commitment that costs something (money, time, operational complexity) and that we’ve chosen to make anyway because it reflects how we think a business should be run.
Our B Corp certification (bcorporation.net) is the most rigorous of these. The B Impact Assessment doesn’t ask you what you intend to do; it asks you to prove what you already do, across governance, workers, community, environment, and customers. Recertifying requires demonstrating improvement. It’s an uncomfortable and valuable process, and it changes how you make decisions because you know you’ll be held to account for them.
The Real Living Wage accreditation (livingwage.org.uk) is one of the most direct expressions of a values-led business. The legal minimum wage is a floor set by government; the real Living Wage is a rate calculated independently based on what people actually need to live. Paying it costs more. We pay it because we think it’s right, and because we don’t believe you can claim to care about social impact whilst paying staff less than they need to live on.
Disability Confident Committed status (gov.uk/disability-confident) signals a commitment to inclusive recruitment and employment practices that goes beyond compliance. Age-Friendly Employer status (agefriendlyemployer.co.uk) does the same for age. Both reflect a belief that talent isn’t narrowly distributed — and that businesses which recruit narrowly lose.
Our Ecologi partnership (ecologi.com) ties business activity directly to environmental action, trees planted, carbon offset, climate projects funded. It’s not a replacement for reducing emissions at source, but it’s a tangible commitment rather than a vague aspiration.
Cyber Essentials certification (ncsc.gov.uk/cyberware/cyber-essentials) matters in a different register, it’s about being a trustworthy custodian of clients’ data and systems. For the organisations we work with, trust isn’t a nice brand attribute. It’s load-bearing.
And our CharityComms Corporate Partner status (charitycomms.org.uk) reflects an active, ongoing investment in the sector we serve, sharing knowledge, supporting best practice, staying connected to the challenges the sector faces rather than observing them from a distance.
Values alignment as a working principle
What the Better Business Act represents, at its core, is the idea that how you run your business and what your business is for should be the same question, not two separate conversations. The Act would make that legally true for all UK businesses. We think it should be ethically true already.
For us, it means every operational decision – who we pay, how we recruit, what we measure, how we govern – is subject to the same scrutiny as our client work. We don’t get to be rigorous about impact in one area and careless about it in another.
It also means that when we sit down with a client and talk about brand strategy, communications, or campaign development, we’re not performing alignment with their mission. We have our own. That changes the nature of the work and, we believe, the quality of it.
The Better Business Act is asking Parliament to change a law. We’re asking ourselves, continuously, to close the gap between what we say we believe and how we actually operate. The two feel connected.
Share this post
You may also find these things interesting
-
Why the retainer model shouldn’t be seen as a nice to have, but a smarter operating model
There’s a particular kind of pain that some charity and public sector comms leads know intimately. A project deadline looms. The agency you want is…
-
Marking B Corp Month: best B Corp impact reports we’ve seen…
…and what they teach us about trust, clarity and design
-
In defence of B Corps
It’s B Corp Month, and like many others, we’ve proudly been a certified B Corp for the past 2.5 years. But it’s hard to ignore…
-
Why trust in campaign thinking is central to charity brands
We’ve been doing a lot of campaign work lately. That’s not a boast, it’s an observation that’s been prompting us to reflect. Across the past…
