Why this produce company eliminated drug tests, background checks
Bonduelle Fresh Americas, home of the Ready Pac Bistro brand, slashed the requirement of drug screenings and background checks, hiring chronically underemployed people.
Why? Those are just a few of many, many ways the multinational produce company changed to become the first large produce grower-shipper of its kind to earn B Corp Certification — a profitable “Benefit for All” company that consumers can trust.
Learn more by joining the conversation with LeAnne Rhodes Ruzzamenti of Equitable Food Initiative and Gretchen Grani of Bonduelle Fresh Americas on this Season 4, Episode 8 of "Tip of the Iceberg Podcast."
Grani is vice president of ESG, or environmental, social and governance, for Bonduelle Fresh Americas.
To earn this B Corp Certification, the company had to look beyond traditional requirements, such as background checks and drug screening, to hire chronically underemployed individuals — quite an interesting idea in a labor shortage, Ruzzamenti said.
Grani also ended the chat with some great advice about undertaking something this rigorous and encompassing by ensuring there is buy-in from the top and all executives — something that has been proven key to undertaking real cultural change in an organization.
The process of earning this B Corp Certification "gave us an opportunity to question the way we were doing our business," Grani said. The “assessment became a really valuable tool for guiding this continual improvement.”
