Certified B Corporation status attained by Millwood Servicing

It emerges that the Surrey-based, family-owned and multi-award winning SME achieved an impressive 116.2 score in its publicly available Impact Assessment. Certified B Corp status is based on the vision of creating a community of for-profit companies committed to redefining success in business.

The five impact pillars of the Certified B Corp qualification process are: Community, Customers, Environment, Governance and Workers.

“We’ve always used our business as a force for good,” explained co-owner and CEO Matt Wood, whose 25^th Anniversary with the company will be celebrated in September. “Through time, we’ve created exciting and impactful initiatives such as the Zero2Hero apprenticeship programme that we started in 2009. In 2020, we established the Woodmor Foundation CIC.”

Wood continued: “The strategic approach we adopt in a bid to always be more inclusive focuses on our ‘why’ rather than our ‘what’. As a B Corp, we’re now part of a global community of businesses that meet high standards of social and environmental impact. We couldn’t be more proud of that fact. This is just the beginning of the journey. It’s our fervent hope that others will follow in our footsteps and, in doing so, serve to create a more inclusive, diverse and considerate global community.”

Turnkey solution

Millwood Servicing was founded back in 1993 by Trevor Wood to provide a turnkey solution encompassing all aspects of fire safety prevention, protection and provision. The business has grown organically and independently and now protects thousands of people, at tens of thousands of sites, all around the UK.

The organisation has attained multiple awards and recognition, including being a Disability Confident Leader for the past six years and recently being awarded Top 75 UK SME, Top 25 London SME and Top 10 Construction and Engineering Best Company to Work For in the Best Companies National Awards 2023.

Millwood Servicing is all about justice, equity, diversity, inclusion and ethics. To this end, the company operates an holistically inclusive career development programme featuring an array of team benefits. There’s also a dedicated team welfare officer within the senior leadership team.

Systemic change

For its part, B Lab is driving systemic change by actively building a global community of Certified B Corporations who meet the highest standards of verified overall social and environmental performance, public transparency and legal accountability. It’s also promoting mission alignment using innovative corporate structures like the benefit corporation to align the interests of business with those of society and to help high impact businesses to be built to last.

The results of any B Impact Assessment are verified by B Lab. B Lab’s goal through the assessment (and its broader verification process) is to measure a given company’s overall social and environmental impact according to criteria specifically developed by the organisation.

Typically, the assessment and verification process takes at least 12 months and B Corps is required to repeat the process every three years. Only upon successfully obtaining at least 80 points in the B Impact Assessment may a company use the trademark identifying it as a B Corp.

*Further information on how companies can assess their ‘pillars’ is available online. It’s free and affords great insight into how a business is presently operating

**Additional detail on Millwood Servicing may be accessed at www.millwood.co.uk

***Millwood Servicing is sponsoring the new Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) categories at the 2024 Fire and Security Matters Awards

****Matt Wood has written two excellent articles for Fire Safety Matters on the subject of ESG. Access the August 2023 digital edition (pp56-58) and the March 2024 digital edition (pp48-50). Matt also served as a special guest on Episode 32 of the Fire Safety Matters Podcast