At Hub, our mission is simple: we provide premium workspace solutions to help businesses and their teams love where they work.
As part of this mission, we became one of Australia’s first Certified B Corporations in 2013, committing to create a positive impact through implementing community, environment, and people-focussed initiatives in everything we do.
As Hub has grown, our B Corp Certification has kept every aspect of the business accountable and committed to recertification, year on year. We offer a B Corp consultancy service to support companies to improve their social and environmental impact, helping them on their journey to become Certified B Corporations. We’re also Australia’s first Carbon Neutral Certified coworking provider, and the first coworking location in the country to achieve a WELL Health-Safety Rating.
To celebrate B Corp Month this year, we chatted to our members and fellow B Corporations Future Super and Harvey, to find out more about how their business is a force for good.
Future Super
Tell us a bit about Future Super.
Hello! We’re Future Super—a super fund that gives people the most power over the future with their super. Our purpose is to build a future free from climate change and inequality.
Future Super is the first 100% fossil fuel-free fund in Australia, and is proving that excluding fossil fuel investments and financing clean energy delivers competitive returns and a better future.
How are you making Future Super a force for good?
We’re on a mission to zero fossil fuels
We believe you can combat climate change through the power of money, which is why we choose to not invest our member’s money in fossil fuels. The super industry is worth $3.4T, and our goal is to ensure all of Australia’s retirement savings are invested to drive positive social-environmental impact.
We’re a Certified B Corp, and Certified carbon neutral
Every three years B Corp completes a rigorous audit of their partners to ensure all businesses are committing to the highest standards of social and environmental performance, and are being accountable to balance profit and purpose. We just got recertified for another three years!
We were also first certified carbon neutral by Climate Active in 2019, and intend to re-certify every year to stay carbon neutral.
We don’t invest in all-male boards
In May 2019, Future Super became the first super fund to completely exclude investments in companies that have no women on their boards.
We value diversity, equity, and inclusion
We have a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Strategy for the next three years. Our DEI approach covers a range of principles from acting ethically, treating everyone fairly and with respect, recognising and fostering diversity and inclusion, being a model workplace and a diverse and inclusive leader, and driving a culture that fosters workplace diversity and inclusion.
We uphold ethical and local supplier guidelines
These guidelines help us prioritise suppliers that are Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander-owned, women-led, local, independent, and B Corp certified. Future Super now screens potential companies before we decide to spend our consumer dollars on them.
To help us do this we’ve signed up to Supply Nation, Australia’s largest national directory of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander-owned businesses, to use as our primary procurement source.
What are some things people might not know about you, as a B Corp?
Menstrual and menopausal leave, mental health leave, and climate emergency leave
In the case of paid leave, employees are entitled to a maximum of up to 6 paid days per calendar year in the event of inability to perform work duties because of menstruation and menopause, and their associated symptoms, with no medical certificate required.
We also offer six paid mental health days a year, designed to encourage employees to take a day for self-care, as well as climate emergency leave should an employees home or family be directly affected or displaced by catastrophic environmental events caused by climate change.
We’re an inclusive employer
Future Super was named an Inclusive Employer 2021-2022 by Diversity Council Australia Ltd. The DCA assessment criteria is based on awareness, engagement, inclusive organisational climate, inclusive leadership, inclusive teams and exclusion.
Baby Bump for members and our team
Baby Bump is a refund of the annual dollar-based administration fee for the time you are on parental leave, up to a maximum of 12 months (equivalent to $60).
We created Baby Bump for two reasons: employers don’t have to pay super when you take parental leave, and primary carers (who are historically mostly women) are more likely to take parental leave than other carers. These two factors contribute to the startling gender inequality in super—that, on average, women retire with 42% less super than men. Baby Bump is Future Super’s baby step towards making super fairer for our members and our team.
Transparent about our gender and cultural diversity reporting
In April 2018, we put the spotlight on Future Super’s performance on gender equity, focusing on gender diversity and our own gender pay gap. We work to specific targets we report on to the team, and we’re transparent about salary thresholds.
Unbiased hiring
We use the recruitment platform, Applied, to reduce the risk of unconscious bias, and improve the quality of hiring decisions. This is done through features that include building application screening and interview questions based on testing the skills required for the job rather than a candidate’s CV, de-identified application screening, and assessing applications by questions rather than candidates.
Harvey
Tell us a bit about Harvey.
Hi! We’re Harvey, and we help conscious businesses grow. We help clarify a business’ vision, setup marketing strategies, and help with marketing campaigns, digital optimisations, and mentoring teams—all to get impact-driven businesses where they want to be.
How are you making Harvey a force for good?
We help companies that help the world
We assess each company we work with against the UN’s 17 SDGs. We then review the scale of their impact, and place them on a scale of good, great, or amazing.
Every year, we aim to do 10% of work for good businesses, 80% for great businesses and 10% for amazing businesses. We also offer 30% and 50% discounts to businesses that make a genuine positive impact—over the past year, we offered $196,243 of discounts to high impact clients.
We’re a Certified B Corp
One of our proudest achievements in 2020 was that Harvey became a certified B Corp. The certification means the world to our little business, since it not only confirms that we are on the right track now, it also gives us a robust framework to use to help us grow while increasing our positive social and environmental impact.
We support local
Wherever possible, we use local service providers and do our best to work with businesses that are owned and run by under-represented groups in the business space. We also do what we can to utilise and work with B Corps (and B Corp-aspirational) companies.
What are some things people might not know about you, as a B Corp?
Team wellbeing
When it comes to how we operate as a team, we try to be as egalitarian as we can by voting on our work priorities and impact areas.
We hold personal development coaching sessions, daily technical and relationship skills coaching, weekly team meditation, Friday wrap sessions celebrating wins and highlighting team members, and daily virtual stand-ups.
Bi-annual client feedback survey
We conduct a client feedback survey every 6 months to understand where we’re delivering value, and where we’re not. Last year, 61.9% of our clients told us we were good value, 38.1% said we could charge more, 0% that we charged too much.
All of our clients would recommend us (or already have), with our NPS (Net Promoter Score) sitting at 69.2 (69.2% promoters, 30.8% neutral, 0% detractors).
Impact-driven donations
We aim to give 5% of our annual revenue to Greening Australia, a company that has been restoring Australia’s unique landscapes and protecting biodiversity at scale through collaborative, science-based programs for over 38 years.
In 2020, we donated $23,000 to Greening Australia, who planted 5,362,611 native trees and shrubs across 6,074 hectares of Australian habitat.
