Envato offers great creative content powered by a global community, with everything you need to get your creative project done. Their products bring customers and content authors together to share and license creative items, tools and talent. From templates and stock assets through to bespoke marketing collateral and freelancers for hire, Envato’s community approach ensures products and assets are comprehensive, on-trend, diverse and engaging.
Great creative content helps customers save time, deliver great work, learn new skills and bring their ideas to life. From freelancers and creative agencies to some of the most widely recognised companies on the planet – including Nike, Walmart, Netflix, Microsoft and more – Envato supports millions of customers every year to complete their creative tasks. Envato is a means for authors to grow their livelihoods, reach new audiences and hone their craft. This community of makers who sell their creative products and services through Envato have earned more than US $750m since the company first started, and are on track to reach US $1 billion in community payout by 2021.
What motivated you to pursue B Corp certification?
We were looking for an independent, external benchmark which would help us holistically measure our impact, and act as a guidepost to help us become the company we want to be. The shareholders of Envato believe that businesses have a multifaceted role in society beyond just profit. When they’re at their best, they serve customers, staff, stakeholders and society, in addition to shareholders. As shareholders, leaders and people inevitably change, achieving B Corp certification ensures continuity of our commitment to both purpose and profit for many years to come.
How do you plan to celebrate your B Corp certification?
We announced the exciting news in an All Hands company meeting via Zoom. When we’re all back in the office post pandemic (whenever that may be!) we’ll make sure to celebrate!
Can you share some of the initiatives or impact areas you do really well in, that qualify you as a B Corp?
We do profit sharing. 100% of our employees receive profit share, even if they’ve left the company within the last year. The percentage of profits that were distributed as bonuses to non-executive workers in the last fiscal year was greater than 20% (the highest bracket in the assessment).
Our workplace engagement scores have been consistently really high for over half a decade. For six consecutive years, we’ve been recognised as one of the best places to work in Australia according to the Best Places to Work benchmarking study.
We’re a transparent company. We publish an annual Public Impact Statement each year which highlights our performance as a company, including our social impact. We share financial information with our employees regularly.
We look after our people by offering them flexible work and a range of health and wellness benefits which are available immediately after they’ve started working at the company.
We deliberately invest into our focus area of diversity and inclusion. We’re committed to creating a positive, safe, supportive and inclusive work environment for all – one that respects and celebrates our differences. We run events within the company which raise awareness for different social causes and celebrate diversity. We ensure that we have inclusive hiring. We publish annual diversity and inclusion reports for the public every year, and have done so since 2014. The reports show that we’re slowly, but steadily, making progress towards a more equal split on gender, as well as all the other D&I initiatives we’ve worked on within the year.
To improve diversity and inclusion in the local tech sector and improve the pipeline of female developer talent in Australia, we established the Apprentice Developer Program in 2018. The program provides successful female applicants with a fully paid position in the company, where a dedicated mentor helps train them to become junior developers within 12 months. We are in our third year of the program which has been a huge success. Of our first five apprentices, four are now Junior Developers and one is a Developer.
We support charities in various ways. The Envato Foundation was established as a Private Ancillary Fund (PAF) to focus on opportunity creation for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. We support and partner with four charitable organisations that focus on opportunity creation for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, particularly through the development and education of children and youth.
Envato Mexico proudly donates money and time to Cres Estipac, an educational institution focused on preparing young people from indigenous communities to reintegrate into their communities and transform them. Envato USA selected St. Judes Children’s Research Hospital as its charity – a charity that’s leading the way the world understands, treats and defeats childhood cancer and other life-threatening diseases. Our kitchens are stocked with delicious snacks that are available to employees for a 50 cent donation. At the end of each month the money is donated to a different, staff-nominated charity, which allows our people to see our donations go to causes they are passionate about.
Lastly, we also donate $100 on a staff member’s third year anniversary at the company to a charitable, not-for-profit organisation of their choice.
Do you have any tips for aspiring B Corps about the certification process?
We recommend that you appoint a project owner for the B Corp certification process, and have them gather a core team to help them answer the assessment. It’s quite a difficult bar to reach and a very comprehensive process, but it’ll be well worth it in the end. We embraced the fact that it was hard and the difficulty of going through the certification process made us develop ourselves as a company.
