Better Business – feat. Omni Productions

Sam Hearn, Managing Director at Omni Productions shares their take.

Throughout March 2021, B Corp Month, we collaborated with some fellow local B Corps. Each week we focused on and featured a specific area within the B Corp Assessment sections to celebrate and champion what it is that makes some of the local B Corporations a “B Corp”, to hopefully inspire many more to join the movement.

ADLIB: For some background information, who are you as a business and what makes your business offering unique?

Sam Hearn: We specialise in producing innovative branded online content, TV commercials and recruitment films. All our work connects people to drive positive change and that is what defines us as a business. As we’ve grown, we’ve become more aware of our impact on the world around us and our ability to make positive change and bring value to society through how we work, who we work with and what we produce. Every film we make is driven by a team dedicated to making the world a better place.

ADLIB: What got you interested in joining the B Corp movement and what does being a B Corp mean to you?

Sam Hearn: We felt that it is so important as a business that we made a positive contribution to society. It’s a responsible way to do business. To us, being a B Corp means we’re constantly questioning the decisions about who we work with, whether we’re making a positive impact and whether our client’s ethos matches ours. Being a B Corp builds trust with our clients. Staff have specifically approached us for work purely because of our ethos.

Becoming a B Corp has profoundly affected our company, from the way we have conversations with clients, through to the way we do business, talk to our staff, how we look at the environment and how we deal with profit. It puts these questions and more in front of you every day and makes you question how you do business.

ADLIB: Can you share a little bit about your B Corp story, what the process was like for you?

Sam Hearn: We became a B Corp in 2018, but we’d always had strong beliefs that business should be done in the most ethical and sustainable way possible. The process was long and it tested us, but it was valuable as it has influenced every element of the business. That ranged from reviewing the type of clients we were looking to work with and what we wanted to achieve as a business, through to all our internal policies and documents and how we could clarify them or make them more positive. We also looked at our energy consumption in the office down to whether we leave lights on to what kind of coffee we drink! Being a B Corp gives you a standard to meet and it affects your thoughts every single day.

ADLIB: What does it mean to you to be a better steward of the planet?

Sam Hearn: We’re a low impact business whose work includes travel and energy use. We’re not a high energy user, but there are a lot of companies similar in size, which makes what we’re doing all the more important as when scaled it can have a bigger impact.

Being a better steward of the planet means respecting and raising awareness of the value of being in balance with nature whilst going about our business. When we started our carbon neutral journey this year, we sparked a relationship with Michael Cunningham of Community Interest Company 9Trees to help plant a small woodland in our name. Hopefully, in the not too distant future, we’ll look back, surrounded by young forests and wildlife.

As a B Corp, our core value is ‘to care’. We come back to it whenever we have to make a hard decision in our business in terms of the projects we work on, how we work, how we treat our people and how we expect to be treated ourselves.

This article is part of the “Better Business” series during B Corp Month, a collaboration of the Bristol & Bath B Local Group. More info about #BristolBathBCorps here: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/9002180/ and more info about B Corp here: https://bcorporation.net/.