Impact Consulting for SMEs: Building businesses that do good
Every business has an impact — on its people, its community, and the environment.
The question isn’t whether you have an impact. It’s whether you’re managing it well, improving it intentionally, and making the most of opportunities for positive change.
Impact consulting from Planet & Purpose helps SMEs do exactly that. There are many reasons that B Corp™ certification may not be right for your business. Perhaps you are not yet eligible, or maybe you have decided it isn’t the path for you, but there is always a great deal you can do to become a more positive, responsible, and resilient business. And we are here to help you do it.
Our approach is fully bespoke.
We do not apply a standard framework to every client, instead taking the time to understand your business, your goals, and where the greatest opportunities for improvement lie, and building our work around that.
Focus on what matters most. One of the biggest barriers to improving business impact is the feeling that it all has to happen at once. It doesn’t.
The most effective impact strategies are focused, realistic, and built around what will make the most meaningful difference for your specific business.
Whether that is creating resilient supply chains, improving employee retention or something else entirely.
As your impact consultant, Laura will work with you to identify the areas where change is most achievable and most valuable.
We remove overwhelm and generic recommendations, instead focusing on clear, practical support that fits with the way your business operates.
This is as relevant for businesses thinking about their environmental footprint as it is for those focused on social impact, governance, supply chain practices, or employee wellbeing. Impact is multidimensional, and so is our work.
How working with an impact consultant can transform your business
Businesses that take impact seriously and manage it strategically build stronger, more resilient organisations. Here’s what that can look like in practice:
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Build the structures, policies, and decision-making processes that embed responsibility into how your business is run.
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Reduce waste, lower your carbon footprint, improve energy efficiency, and manage your environmental risks with a clear strategy and measurable targets.
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Evaluate your suppliers against social and environmental criteria, reduce supply chain risk, and build relationships with partners who share your values.
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Understand and strengthen your positive contribution to the communities you operate in and discover how to demonstrate it clearly to customers, partners, and stakeholders.
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Create a workplace where people feel genuinely valued, informed, and involved, thereby improving retention, engagement, and your ability to attract purpose-driven talent.
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Measure, report, and communicate your impact clearly and credibly: to customers, investors, employees, and other stakeholders who increasingly expect transparency.
✦ TRUSTED BY IMPACT-DRIVEN BUSINESSES ✦
How impact consulting can support you
No two businesses are the same, and our impact consulting work reflects that.
Every engagement begins with listening, allowing us to understand where you are, what you are trying to achieve, and what is getting in the way. From there, we build a programme of work that is tailored entirely to your business.
Depending on what your business needs, our work together might include:
A thorough review of your current impact across environmental, social, and governance dimensions. Allowing us to identify strengths, gaps, and opportunities.
Development of a clear, prioritised impact strategy with realistic targets and a practical action plan.
Support to implement changes from creating and embedding policies to evaluating suppliers and improving practices.
Help to measure and report your impact in a way that is credible, transparent, and useful to your stakeholders.
Ongoing advisory support to keep your impact strategy on track as your business grows and evolves.
Guidance on ESG considerations relevant to your sector, size, and stakeholder expectations.
Investment is tailored to the scope and nature of your engagement. Book a discovery call and we’ll talk through what’s right for your business.
Impact consulting is right for your business if...
You want to improve your business’s impact on people and planet, but B Corp certification is not the right fit for any reason.
You have good intentions around sustainability and social impact, but no clear strategy or roadmap to make them real.
You’re facing increasing pressure from customers, investors, or partners to demonstrate your ESG credentials, and you want to respond with substance and confidence.
You want to improve a specific area of your business, whether that be your supply chain, environmental practices or workplace culture, and you need expert support to do it well.
You want to measure and report your impact clearly, but don’t know where to start.
Frequently asked questions about impact consulting
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An impact consultant helps businesses understand, improve, and communicate the effect they have on people, communities, and the environment.
An impact consultant works across the full breadth of a business’s social, environmental, and governance practices, identifying where improvement is most meaningful and supporting you to make it happen in a practical, structured way.
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An impact strategy is a clear, practical plan for how your business will improve its positive contribution to people and planet over time. It sets out where you are starting from, what you want to achieve, and how you are going to get there through realistic targets, defined actions, and a way of measuring progress. A good impact strategy is a working tool that shapes how your business makes decisions over time.
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Because our impact consulting work is fully bespoke, investment varies depending on the scope, focus, and duration of the engagement. We’ll always be transparent about costs from the outset.
Book a discovery call and we’ll talk through what’s involved and what’s right for your business.
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Not at all. Impact consulting is entirely separate from B Corp certification and is for any business that wants to do more good, regardless of their sector. What matters to us is the commitment to genuine improvement, whatever the starting point.
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ESG stands for Environmental, Social, and Governance - the three areas through which a business’s broader impact and responsibility are typically assessed. ESG consulting helps businesses understand their performance across these areas, manage related risks, and demonstrate their credentials to stakeholders who use ESG criteria to evaluate suppliers, partners, or investment decisions. Our impact consulting work incorporates ESG considerations where they are relevant to your business and sector.
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Yes, whether you are being asked to complete ESG questionnaires by larger clients, respond to investor scrutiny, or meet the expectations of procurement teams with sustainability criteria, impact consulting can help you build a credible, substantive response.
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An impact report is a transparent account of the effect your business has had on people and planet over a given period. It typically covers environmental performance, social contribution, governance practices, and progress against your stated targets. A well-produced impact report builds credibility with customers, partners, and employees. Increasingly, impact reports are something that stakeholders in many sectors expect to see.
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Yes. As a certified B Corp, Planet & Purpose cannot work with businesses on B Lab’s controversial industries list.
We do believe in all business making positive change, so please do get in touch, no matter your industry, and we will be able to have a discussion and connect you with someone who can help in cases where we cannot.
Considering B Corp certification?
For many businesses, impact consulting is a natural stepping stone towards B Corp certification as it starts to build the practices, policies, and evidence base that make certification achievable. If you are curious about what B Corp might look like for your business, we are happy to explore that as part of our work together.
When the time is right, B Corp Complete gives you everything you need to pursue certification with confidence.