Strengthening our Mission

Today we launch our updated Directory, the place where accredited organisations appear and where we know people go to find responsible organisations – where consumers can spend their hard-earned cash with confidence, businesses looking for responsible freelancers or suppliers, investors looking for ethical investments, and individuals looking for good potential employers.

We want every organisation that meets our 10 components to be recognised and celebrated. That’s why GBC accreditation is completely FREE of charge, with a straightforward application process that takes less than an hour.

Over the past few months, we have been employing AI, alongside our own manual checks, to take a deep dive into the large UK companies and identify those we believe are Aligned with the Good Business Charter’s 10 components. Where we have reasonable confidence that this is the case, we have added them to our Directory with a yellow ‘Aligned’ sash to indicate this status.

We are now in the process of writing to them to encourage them to confirm compliance and proceed to full accreditation. This is part of our mission, to not only provide a clear signpost to the responsible organisations, but to build up a comprehensive listing of ALL organisations that are committed to the Good Business Charter’s 10 components.

The Living Wage Foundation has long boasted that over half of the FTSE100 are Living Wage Employers – that was a good starting place for us. Yet, we have been stunned to find that the real living wage isn’t the only significant barrier in the GBC. Prompt payment is. Of the 7,900 companies that report payment data to the government less than 20% pay 95% of their invoices within 60 days and 95% of them on time. Too often those that suffer are small businesses supplying them.

The headline figure in all this is that we estimate that less than 5% of the country’s 8,300 large companies are aligned with the Good Business Charter. And whilst 50% of the FTSE100 may pay the real living wage, we have found that only 13 FTSE100 companies demonstrate compliance across all 10 components. These include Aviva and Legal & General, both already committed signatories of the Charter.

So, what do we take from this?

1. As we’ve always said, but now with greater vigour still, if you can meet the GBC’s 10 components you should be rightly proud of yourself and get all the recognition and praise you deserve.

2. What we thought was a common-sense benchmark does indeed seem to be a high bar – and something as basic as prompt payment is a big part of that. We will campaign ever more loudly about this injustice towards small businesses, of which on average 38 go out of business every day due to late payment.

3. It is our sense that there are many more SMEs that DO comply with the Good Business Charter’s 10 components – and whilst we are unable to AI scan the 5.5 million of them, we can all spread the word to encourage those that can, to apply and join our movement.

We step out with renewed strength and clarity on why we are needed. There are companies out there who wax lyrical about their responsible business practices, but they don’t do it all. Just look at the prompt payment reports for some well-known ethical businesses, lauded for their sustainable practices whilst paying suppliers late. The Good Business Charter is clear in its ambition to recognise and celebrate organisations that meet our 10 components and drive the public to their door – and calls on all businesses to raise their game to meet our benchmark and see all stakeholders championed – their colleagues, customers, community, suppliers and of course the planet.

Jenny Herrera
CEO, Good Business Charter
14 October 2026