welcome back to another ESG centered podcast everyone this is red I'm an independent verification analyst and your host kicking back to the world of ESG we'll be learning a bit more about one of the most well-known accreditation bodies for businesses for good blab we'll also be diving into what it's like to be amongst the team doing the audit and verification process stay tuned to our podcast empowering people enabling business taking us further into the blab Movement we have here with us one of the pioneering members of the team of independent verification analysts and my mentor hi June thank you for coming in how are you hi Ray thank you for having me here today hi everybody thank you for spending time with us to listen to our podcast okay about me I joined the cohort one Iva training back in 2021 when Malaysia was slowly coming out of the covid-19 movement control so the onboarding training was uh very structured uh enlightening and the interactions with fellow ivas made me feel that I was reconnecting with the world well so that was how I kind of got involved in the Iva work now apart from work I play too yeah I enjoy gardening and I play t is every weekend what about you red no I wish I could Garden if I haven't been killing any and all plants that I may have been taken care of but outside of work I am actually a musician I play guitar and I game a lot and I have five cats so yeah I the cat lady here you are The Talented ones yeah they quite a lot of ivas are actually very talented unfortunately uh I can't do those uh talented musical things I like I like musical yeah gardening is a talent I promise I mean you can grow anything I can kill all my plants but yeah yep okay that is what we do for fun so yeah thank you so much for coming in today so today we'll be talking about what our role is like as an independent verification analyst or if that's too much of a Mouf we called ivas for short so ivas for blab first things first can you Enlighten our listeners on what exactly is Bab and what is a b cor okay the be in Bop stands for benefit for all all is business and the world okay so a Bop is a for-profit company just like janim that has a high standard of verified performance accountability and transparency across five areas which are governance workers environment community and customers okay so if you are interested in knowing more about Bops or getting to know what are the Bops around you in your country uh you can go to the Bop directory on the website BC corporation.net okay and you can find any Bop that is around your country and then you will get to know yeah these are the uh business for good beab on the other hand is the certifying body that verifies the company's impact Bap develops and evolves the ESG standards to support the global movement of business that benefits all people communities and the planet bab enables that by setting up an online B impact app that is where we come in and work on okay the B impact app B impact app is kind of like uh the platform where companies can come in and quiz themselves right they can measure their impact through that area exactly y okay so thank you for that overview J thank you so much so our partnership with VAB J J partnership with VAB started in 2021 so what was the goal of this partnership and what was its supposed impact on the certification process as a whole yeah uh there are so many companies wanting to highlight to the world that they are a business for good so all the companies are queuing up to become a bob to be certified but the certified process can be rigorous because uh we got to Showcase you know that they have got high performance in performance accountability and transparency so so that was a huge cue of potential Bops therefore the purpose of the partnership was to actually address the growth of this movement and of course to reduce the wait time for the company in the Bop certification process yeah so the Iva will provide the workforce to scale the Bop certification process and also act as a third party between bab and the companies to maintain the Integrity of the whole certification process yeah that's actually pretty cool so it's faster now with a lot more people doing the work that means more B Corps yeah so yes definitely [Music] yeah so in the early months of our work you and I had the pleasure of like doing a little bit of management work with our team back then I did some schedulings in there um managing leaves and timekeeping was pretty much intense on top of the verific Tas that we had and you had the senior Ops right June oh well we have to step up okay we have to step up when the when the company asks us to do something um so apart from the Iva work here a couple of months after the onboarding training so I was given a chance to provide this management support to ensure smooth operation of the whole Iva team to ensure that we follow the processes that is required by blab and then also to ensure that we do our work effectively you know at a time there were tools you know whenever we give some feedback to Bab they are listening to us and they created so many tools and guidelines to actually guide us through and enable us to become more and more familiar with the process yeah so the role in management actually allowed me to have insights on the dynamism between janash teim and blab and our leaders indeed have very good foresight and they are caring and uh also kudos to you to step up you know and help me and we do this together yeah okay and then as bab uh has gained more confidence in our Support Services we were given more responsibilities gradually right then uh we were tasked with the onboarding training so now we actually do that on the janash team side that was when we had Sarah baras and Eric Sanchez to join us to join our little Ops Team yeah so it is a privilege and joy to work closely with all of you we felt very very connected to our peers as well during this time so we are called Iva independent verification analyst we did this role um with blab but can you share with our listeners like what exactly are our roles and responsibilities taking up this job okay uh so as an Iva we give assistance to the potential B cops the companies to provide information on the B impact app yeah because it's a rigorous process yeah so when the company provide the information the documentation we will have to review and then verify the accuracy of the information given and ensure that the companies capture and present their ESG impact in the Bia accurately yeah does it make sense yeah it's basically like kind of mediating the understanding of Standards right to these companies yes so I enjoyed the interaction with the people and companies around the world very enlightening and interesting to learn about their business practices and challenges yeah definitely definitely enlightening I like that word yep well there are quite a lot of business models yeah that we are not familiar with but the companies are indeed creative true true true I kind of get that that part about you know industries that might we might not be familiar with that would entail us to be a little bit more you know um resourceful I guess with learning more about the industry so that when you get to the call with a client you have an idea on what it is you want to ask them or check with them right so yeah it's actually a challenge and it's also it's a perk I guess learning more at the same time being it's a whole you're right actually there's another aspect is actually the research aspects yeah so yeah indeed we cannot say what company or what industry May kind of been assigned to us so once we receive a case then we do need to carry out some research to understand the industry to understand some Jons probably that's right yeah research is part of our daily life as well yeah I think like if I'm going to think about like a favorite thing about our role though is kind of like almost a double-edged short my favorite thing about this role is the flexibility of our time right so we get to say on how we want to do our job in terms of time we want to work at the same time it's also kind of like the most challenging part about the role because we would get assigned companies from the other side of the globe and that would tail also like adjusting to time zones as well so it's both a favorite and a challenging part for me about the role and I think another favorite would be I guess there is this new found appreciation on diversity because of one how diverse the companies have get assigned to their culture as well and the diversity within our team as well what do you think about that because there's like so many of us right or there's so many of us already oh yes diversity changes challenges are these thing that we have to embrace so our job is actually pretty adventurous yeah correct so among our team talking about Iva group indeed we are diverse and inclusive Workforce some of us are people with disabilities and some of us come from marginalized communities yeah and most of us most of us multilingual we have to cover companies from indeed all over the world from the US side to the Australia side really the whole bunch of different companies so I think we speak all the different languages yes Spanish Portuguese french I think Russian somebody could speak Russian too Russian that's so cool definitely then Chinese of course then English as a native yeah etc etc yeah so many so many languages in one team corre that actually one of the most cool thing about being an Iva how ierse and how many cultures there are in this one team so yeah hopefully we expand even more yeahh M [Music] yeah speaking of expansion so so many changes have come up back then we only did verification then we did some evaluation by me and some other team members which evaluation is another step in the process right away um to my fellow listeners we did disclosures and stuff so yeah exactly yes yeah so there has been like an up in terms of responsibilities and expansion of both team members and Services provided so now that we have this expansion we have this whole new transition now to tuer and you're amongst those spearheading the iso process so can you tell our audience more about tuer this transition to it yes indeed actually for the blab projects we in fact has expand in the past two years to cover the whole process from scoping onwards eligibility studies scoping and then evaluation then the verification part and then we cover also the recertification then the support services for the risk assessment the DQ and then background check actually all the ivas are deployed in covering the different areas of the whole blab the B cor certification process so in our organization change is the constant so we have expanded now to cohort six and picking up more and more responsibilities in the whole process so the management structure has evolved into a regional structure it has grown out of us this little Ops Team okay but we we still maintain to provide any task to assist when we can and the new company called toer has been set up to house all the ivas now this will by forming the company this will allow us to design the work process to be more audit or certification service Centric okay we are looking forward to meeting or exceed any International certification requirements ISO is one of the examples maybe more uh depending on our research okay so we will decide later but we will set up the process first by doing this hopefully this will increase our credibility and profile in the ESG space okay and hopefully we can serve more certification B this yes so yeah everybody you heard that we are two c we are a new division so keep an eye out for us we're going to help new company it's not only a division it it's a new company it's a whole new company yeah whole thing so everybody listening here if you have a business or company that you're interested in becoming a BC Corp I get into your browser and log into the B impact assessment app so type in there b impact assessment. net you can create your company's profile and can play around with a platform it's free by the platform is you can interact with the buttons in there you can measure your impact what you're currently working on and you can also use impact app to set your old goals it's a point system by the way if you guys don't know yet it's a point system and if if your score is more than 80 points we can actually submit it over to blab once you're done and just wait a little bit you can have an analyst come in in contact with you to help you out with your B Corp certification so um who knows you might be talking to me you might be talking to June or anybody of our teammates so yeah feel free to log in and create your profile all right and June anything to add here oh yes apart from the companies of course it's the people so if you yourself or the listeners you are welcome to join us as an Iva to start an adventure with us so like my background is in it and I have experience working with companies and corporations around the world so when I become an Iva I will receive all the training okay to understand about the ESG standards and the processes is a very interesting journey to have and to continue to serve the ESG space so if if you are interested in joining our team to become an Iva keep a lookout for our recruitment advertisements in Jedi jobs or our company's website okay so we are looking forward to hearing from you all who knows you'll be talking to us again we all be teammates soon all right so June thank you thank you thank you so much for your time today it's been a real pleasure hearing the Ia story yeah and is indeed a very rewarding Journey it is lovely to spend time with you here red thank you again everybody for listening to us all right thank you so much and that's it for today everyone and we certainly anticipate the continued success of Jam's VAB certification efforts to our listeners thank you for joining us in this insightful conversation stay tuned for more episodes I'm your host red until next time take care and thank you for being a part of Jan's Journey [Music]