A confirmation, not a new direction
When we started, I honestly expected an intensive process in which we’d have to change a great deal. Olivier regularly asked me during the process how it was going.
“It’s actually going surprisingly smoothly,” was usually my answer. “There’s quite a bit of documentation involved, but what we’re mainly discovering is that we’re already doing a lot right. It just hadn’t really been written down anywhere yet.”
And that may well have been where the greatest value lay.
During the B Impact Assessment, you examine virtually every part of your organization under a microscope, from governance and HR to environmental impact, transparency, and the impact you have on your clients and society. That’s how we discovered that our way of working already aligned well with the principles of B Corp™. Not because we’d ever pursued a certification, but because responsible business practice simply felt natural to us. As an independent advisor working exclusively on the tenant’s side, that kind of fair-minded weighing of interests is essentially already in our DNA.
With a score of 89.9 points, well above the required 80, we ultimately received independent confirmation of that too.
GROWTH CALLS FOR STRUCTUREG
When we started the process, Parella had around twenty colleagues. We now number 28, and we’re still growing.
It’s precisely in a phase like this that you notice culture alone is no longer enough. You don’t want the way you collaborate, make decisions, and safeguard quality to depend solely on word-of-mouth. You want new colleagues to understand what you stand for and why you make certain choices.
The B Corp™ process helped us take that step. We didn’t need to reinvent our organization, mostly, we documented what had previously been second nature. We described processes, professionalized parts of our HR cycle, and made our way of working within workplace consultancy, brokerage, and project management more concrete. That gives us a firm footing today, and for the organization we want to keep building.
RESPONSIBLE BUSINESS OFTEN COMES DOWN TO SMALL CHOICES
At the start of the process, all sorts of questions came up internally too:
“Will we even still be allowed to drive to appointments?” and “Are there certain materials we should stop using altogether?”
The answer to these questions turned out to be surprisingly simple: usually, yes, it’s still allowed, but it has to become a conscious consideration.
Responsible business practice is rarely about rigid rules. Far more often, it’s about making conscious choices and daring to make that judgment call again and again.
Within our design studio, we therefore systematically investigate which materials we can reuse and how more sustainable alternatives can find their way into the design process earlier. Every work environment calls for its own solution, and that’s precisely why we want this consideration to become a natural part of every workplace project we guide.
A MIRROR FOR OUR ORGANIZATION
Like any certification process, this one didn’t go entirely without a hitch. Just when we thought we were nearly done, the final verification revealed that our company structure needed to be assessed differently than initially assumed. That meant part of the work had to be redone. At that moment, the process suddenly felt a lot further away again.
Even so, looking back, we can smile about it. It forced us to look even more closely at our own organization, and it ultimately made the certification stronger.
PERHAPS THE NICEST CONFIRMATION OF ALL
Although the certification was the trigger, perhaps the nicest confirmation came from a completely different direction. As part of the process, we spent considerable time reflecting on our role as an employer. We looked beyond what’s written on paper, and above all at how colleagues actually experience Parella day to day. The results confirmed something we also feel ourselves when we work together: an organization where people collaborate with enjoyment, are given responsibility, and help each other grow.
For us, that culture doesn’t stop at our office door. The way we work together internally also forms the basis of how we approach our projects. Good collaboration, in our view, leads to better workplace advice, more thoughtful office designs, and ultimately better work environments for our clients and the people who work there every day.
Perhaps that’s the biggest lesson of the whole process. Impact doesn’t start with a certificate, it starts with the people who try to make a difference together, every single day.
IN CLOSING
On July 21, 2026, we received the final confirmation that Parella is officially Certified B Corporation™. A wonderful milestone, but certainly not the finish line.
Looking back on the past months, what stands out most is that the process helped us look at our own organization more consciously. Much of what turned out to matter for the certification, we were already doing. The difference is that we’ve now better documented what we stand for, how we shape our independent workplace advisory services, and how we intend to preserve that quality as Parella keeps growing.
For our clients, perhaps less changes than you might think. We remain the same independent workplace advisor that stands exclusively on the tenant’s side. The only difference is that today, we can better substantiate what we’ve stood for all along.
Koen Broekhuizen
Strategic Advisor