Explore digital tools to implement Human Rights Due Diligence (HRDD)

Building Better Businesses: What Becoming B Corp Means to Us

Written by Ulula

July 16, 2021

Update as of July 14, 2021: 

The B Lab recently named Ulula as a Best For The WorldTM B Corp, in the “Customers” impact area! The Best for the World are B Corps whose scores in one or more of the five impact areas assessed towards the certification reach the top 5% of all B Corps worldwide. As all B Corps are already businesses that meet the highest standards of verified social and environmental performance, public transparency, and legal accountability to balance profit and purpose, we are incredibly proud of this recognition. 

Ulula’s work equipping companies with digital tools to create more responsible supply chains stood out for its impact on customers, a category which covers topics like ethical and positive marketing, quality assurance of products and services, and data privacy. The evaluation recognized Ulula’s focus on and support of underserved populations – from migrant workers to farmers and mining communities. We do this by enabling all stakeholders to report on working conditions and broader ESG impacts directly and anonymously through any mobile phone. In the Customers category, Ulula also ranked high for its support to companies’ improvement against ESG targets.

Originally published April 9, 2021: 

‘Ulula’ means ‘reveal’ in a Southern African language, Chichewa. Today, we are so excited to reveal that we’re officially a certified B Corporation. This designation means that we have joined the community of 3,900+ B Corporations in more than 70 countries and 150 industries around the world that meet the highest standards of verified social and environmental performance, public transparency, and legal accountability to balance profit and purpose.

Getting B Corp certified was naturally aligned with Ulula’s core vision which is to help create a world where technology facilitates inclusive social dialogue to ensure workers can achieve a living wage, ensure basic human rights, health and safety standards, access to skills training, and freedom of association. The B Corp certification not only validates the positive impact of our work, but also keeps us accountable to evolving and ambitious environmental, social and governance standards. 

The Ulula Origin Story 

Ulula was built to amplify previously unheard voices of workers within rural communities where extractive projects were causing violence, displacement, and day to day disruption to community member’s livelihoods. By utilising existing telecommunications infrastructure, Ulula sources insights directly from workers and project affected communities, and equips brands and businesses with real-time data to make informed decisions that improve their social, labor, economic and environmental impacts. 

Since our founding, we have scaled our presence in the mining sector, and also entered the manufacturing, garment and textile, construction, electronics and agricultural industries to mitigate human rights risks in global supply chains. 

A Glimpse into our recent impact 

At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Ulula worked with businesses and industry associations to respond to the impacts of COVID-19 on the ground, spanning 17 countries and 200,000 workers. Through our remote COVID-19 worker impact assessments, we measured health and safety risks to stakeholders in remote palm oil communities and smallholder farmers in Latin America, established remote worker grievance systems in Southeast Asia, and deployed impact surveys with community members to understand risks of food security, access to PPE and medical support, and more. 

So, what are we committing to as we join the B Corp Community? 

As we join the community, we’re excited to continue progress in these key areas: 

  • Enhancing visibility into global supply chains. We provide organizations with multiple accessible channels to connect with their workforce and help them keep their commitments to operate responsibly. 
  • Help improve working conditions and well-being around the world.  Our technology anonymizes worker identity in the feedback process to ensure that workers do not face retaliation for raising valid concerns in the effort towards continuous improvement in workplace conditions. 
  • Enable businesses to measure progress towards social impact goals. We provide measurable insights to businesses on how they’re performing against key social, environmental and governance indicators to help track progress towards sustainability targets. Whether it’s curating our survey questions to identify instances of labor exploitation or delivering tailored training to workers on new workplace policies, we will help companies measure their advancements and areas for improvement.

Ulula’s mission is to empower hard-to-reach workers and communities globally in order to improve livelihoods, sustainability, and wellbeing. However, we have always recognized the importance of supporting our customers in implementing our tools to ensure effective health and safety standards, grievance mechanisms and safe working conditions. We have helped our customers reach over 1 million people, across 30 countries, and 8 industries while maintaining peak customer satisfaction, and we will continue to add value to customers’ businesses while supporting human rights and improving global supply chain responsibility.

We’re excited to join a community of like-minded organizations using the power of business to address pressing societal and environmental challenges. We’re proud of the work we’re doing and eager to keep moving forward. 

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