The Plank 2022 Annual Impact Report

Today we are proud to open our doors in sharing our 2022 Impact Report with you, as part of an annual commitment moving forward. 

Part of our B Corp promise is to be transparent in our actions to our team, our clients, our community, and the world. Whether it be the economic impact, our environmental footprint, our commitment to DEI and justice, our operations, how we take care of the people within our orbit, how we support and build up our community, or even our ethical principles to maintain a healthy, inclusive, accessible and open web — we have attempted to cover the most important and reflective topics throughout this report.

Our year at Plank actually follows an August to July-calendar. We’ve taken the fall to put together what we believe is a good template for us to share, evaluate, and repeat next year. 

As a B Corp, and as a purpose-driven company, we’re committed to continuous improvement and sustainable change — meaning that every year this report may look a little different as we discuss new initiatives, practices, policies, or processes to reflect those changes.

Here is a snippet of our 2022 Impact Report:

“We live in a world rapidly changing due to the climate crisis, unrest, and war affecting many of us and our families; equality for all is still a daily battle; and social and economic ramifications of the pandemic continue to echo in every part of our lives.

We faced rapidly shifting work norms, including a new status quo for remote work within our industry. We saw the great resignation as employees around the world questioned their jobs, how much money they were paid, and how and where they want to live their lives.

We watched the tide of financial concern, ever ebbing and flowing, drawback as a wave of recession loomed over the world’s economy. Our individual, group and personal investments took a hit. Inflation and cost of living expenses touched us all, as everything around us got more expensive. Money issues were around every corner.

Within this context, we began to create new foundations for the company to work from. We created more structure, hired to ensure our team would always be a top priority, codified and doubled our investments into professional learning and expertise, empowered the team to define our process and improve the value and scope of the work we do, we invested more into a distributed workforce, and we took the time to listen.

As we made many of these internal facing improvements, it became apparent that these changes went beyond the borders of our company. We began work on B Corp certification, and the stars aligned. B Corp gave us clarity into how we could anchor our new foundation to a bedrock of social and environmental concern that has been at the core of Plank since day one.”

The B Corp community and the powerful network we’ve built over 24 years are vast and full of inspiration. We have a lot to learn and a lot of goals for improvement in the coming years. This Annual Impact Report is, by no means, a statement of all of the good work we’re doing, but rather a transparent look into the different areas of the business — the good and the bad. We are human after all. 

After you’ve taken a look, we would love to hear your feedback on what we could be doing better. Email us at hello@plankdesign.com