By any standards 2024 has been a tumultuous year both in Corporate and Public worlds.  With major shifts and changes in the Political Landscape continuing to ripple through the Globe, there are inevitably impacts on the Business World.  While we can anticipate some re-orientation and disorientation on some themes and targets such as energy and DEI which have emerged in 2024, Business should continue the focus on the existing underlying Consumer and Governance trends. 

There has been considerable success in improving the participation of women on Boards of the FTSE 350 at around 40%. A key aspect of this progression was compliance with targets, facilitated by removing the recruitment blockers and ‘qualification’ barriers to women achieving Non-Executive Director roles. However, in Executive Leadership roles there remains a significant lag, with women in Executive Leadership positions at 35% in the FTSE 350 and only 28% participation of women in the key Executive Committee of the Business. Crucially there is a significant and persistent deficit of women in the pivotal role of CEO, currently only 9% of CEOs in the FTSE 350 are women. 

Board Chairs and Directors are committed to the oversight of their organisations in order to achieve effective performance and sustainability. While the challenges of achieving this are various and multiple there is one stand-out challenge which requires the organisation to be aware, agile, change focused and brave. Namely the challenge of Technology-Digital transformation.

A quick perusal of the Board trends and challenges for 2024 reads like a road map of the past 16 years of Board and Business advancements since the publication of the Walker Review into Corporate Governance following the 2008 Financial Crisis.

Amidst substantial shifts in public service delivery following recent government changes, the Public Chairs’ Forum (PCF), pledges unwavering support for leaders. Dedicated to facilitating conversations and collaborations, PCF aims to assist leaders in navigating these changing landscapes.

AI and The Board, a Take-Over or Liberation?

The search for Board Effectiveness is often an elusive one.  It is highly specific to the Company, the sector it is in, the business challenges it faces, the Board Chair and the history of the Board, to mention but a few of the contextual factors impacting on a Board’s performance. 

Creating a Dynamic and Adept Board Leading a Resilient and Responsive Business

As Boards scan the strategic horizon there are plenty of threats and dilemmas to be faced.  The likelihood of one crisis or another impacting on the business is high, with threats from: pandemics, wars, financial crisis, environmental crisis, political turmoil and technological disruption.

Boards need to continue to think long and hard about how they can ensure that their businesses are resilient and responsive.

How can a Board respond to these challenges?  Critically before starting to dapple with the business, some self-reflection may be necessary, evaluating what shape the Board is in to face the future.  A number of key areas for evaluation on ‘fit for purpose’ are.

Legal Women magazine has interviewed Helen Pitcher OBE. In the article, Helen discusses her career development and her current roles.

Independent External Board Evaluations every three years became a key element of the 2010 Governance ‘Code’. Since then, there has been a growing development and focus on the Board as an independent entity. The ‘2010 Code’ stimulated an increased depth of Board effectiveness evaluation across the FTSE 350 and allied companies and organisations who now use the ‘Code’ as a benchmark of governance excellence. 

We are seeing more and more discussion, debate and concern about the concept of ‘Overboarding’ in the Boardrooms of our Businesses, Enterprises and Organisations. This is essentially a question of capacity, does the individual sitting on the Board have the ability to effectively contribute to the oversight and strategy of the Business- Enterprise.

It is a good question and an emerging one as the Fund managers, Shareholder Advisors and Compliance Index compilers seek to provide data and information to enable informed ‘voting’ choices on the effective make-up of a Board. This data availability has been used to particular effect on the question of climate change readiness, where individual directors have been voted down due to their lack of climate change credentials. It focuses more attention on the make up of the Board.

This year’s KidsOut Trolley Dash was a phenomenal event. We want to congratulate everyone who took part. They collected over 5000 toys. This is a new record for the organisation.

It took a long time to collect the toys and move them upstairs. However, as you can see from the photos, everyone had so much fun. This charity and the group of volunteers are brilliant. Also thank you to all the vendors who donated the toys.

As a regular contributor on the January ‘Pipeline Top Flight’ flagship Leadership programme for senior female executives targeting at CEO, COO, CFO and other senior leadership roles.  I come away with a refreshed sense of what can be accomplished and a determination to support the further achievement of women to the senior levels of our companies, organisations and Boards.  It is my annual visible glimpse of the talent pool awaiting to be released on to our Boards. 

On the programme we collectively ‘dived’ into the world of Boards, to better understand what Boards need and the role the individual can play.  This enables the participants to understand what drive Boards and to target the senior leadership roles which support the Board with more precision.

The drain of talented women from the executive ranks is appalling and hits at the fundamental bedrock of our talent pool of candidates to participate on and run our Boards.

As a regular contributor to the ‘Pipeline Top Flight’ leadership programme, I see a stream of talented women who are fortunate to have been supported by their organisations to get impactful strategic learning and guidance on making it into the top Executive, CEO, COO and CFO roles of our businesses and organisations and to improve their retention in those roles. 

We are pleased to announce Helen Pitcher OBE new role as the Chair of the Judicial Appointments Commission.

She will hold the role for 3 years from 1 January 2023, until 31 December 2025.

Switched-on non-executive directors will ensure climate change remains on a board’s agenda.

The exciting world of the non-executive director (NED)! Just as you thought we were emerging from Covid, companies are thrown back into the choppy waves of ‘climate change, with a surge of motivated interest groups, governments and ‘woke’ investors. With plenty of isolation time to fill during the pandemic, COP26 and the plethora of climate change documentaries and shows became avid viewing.

Switched-on non-executive directors will ensure climate change remains on a board’s agenda.

The exciting world of the non-executive director (NED)! Just as you thought we were emerging from Covid, companies are thrown back into the choppy waves of ‘climate change, with a surge of motivated interest groups, governments and ‘woke’ investors. With plenty of isolation time to fill during the pandemic, COP26 and the plethora of climate change documentaries and shows became avid viewing.

The FRC (Financial Reporting Council) Review of Corporate Governance Reporting published in November 2021, continues to document the slow glacial creep towards better corporate governance reporting.

We have as Boards, a period of grace to ‘get our act together’ and improve the consistency and general standards of Board Reporting on governance matters in the Report and Accounts. Or it could it be taken out of our hands by the newly created Audit, Reporting and Governance Authority (ARGA).

The Report highlighted the lack of illumination of the Boards reporting on governance matters, with a patchwork of minimal, lawyer driven ‘what’s the least we have to say for this compliance point’. This contrasts against the FRC’s desire to see a coherent, integrated and strategic approach to governance development reporting.

As we reflect on the decade since the Davis Report on Women on Boards, there is the opportunity to celebrate and commiserate on what has been achieved.

As we see from the recently published Spencer Stuart Board Diversity Index 2021 and the Female FTSE Board Report by Cranfield University, there are many successes to proclaim on the gender progression and minority representation on Boards. However, there are two glaring and highly impactful ‘black holes’ in key crucial positions which mute this celebration. We have got nowhere near solving the inequality of women in the key CEO leadership positions and nowhere near a 40% women leadership of our Boards.

Leaders need to provoke and challenge the whole board to participate and engage as a group, to be ready for challenges ahead. But do they have the necessary skills?

The role of the chair has changed significantly over the past 10 years and now requires a set of skills that can balance the significant step change in a board’s responsibilities and reporting, embracing the challenges of widespread stakeholder lobbying across the environmental, social and governance (ESG) landscape.

I have been advocating for some time the necessity for accelerated action to appoint more woman as Chairman in the FTSE 350 as a driver of change at the Board level (Article: Women Covid Leadership – The Head, The Heart and The Egos, The Gender Bonus Beyond further articles on our website). My view is that greater gender diversity in the Chairman role would have a leverage effect and directly hasten and advance Executive pipeline diversity at senior leadership levels, with the percentage of women in executive roles flatlining in both the FTSE 100 and 250 in 2021. Also it would actively facilitate tackling pay gap differentials at the Board and executive levels and provide a more effective response to the growing board challenges on ESG issues, especially climate change. While advances have been made on the gender balance on Boards, the Chairman stands out as an unacknowledged ‘blind spot’ in advancing our Boards into a modern era.

We are pleased to announce that Helen Pitcher OBE has been elected as Chair of PCF Management Committee, for a two-year term until October 2023.

We wish her all the best in her new role.

Read the full press release here

Helen Pitcher will be chairing CRF's annual conference on Building and Sustaining Great Organisations on the 12th October 2021. The conference will be both in-person and online. You can register for the event here.

ESG is becoming a key focus for shareholders and we are all having to adjust to the learning curve.

To learn more about how your organisation can sign up as an “Accelerator for the UN Initiative Race to Zero”, go to their website. This site gives access to free toolkits that will be invaluable to inform your team and Board.

When we look back at the ‘good the bad and the ugly’ of the Covid Crisis, there will be many lessons to be learnt and best practices reviewed to prepare for any future global pandemic.

Some will be very practical lessons such as the need for quick reactions on key activities like trace and isolation, social distancing and using protective masks.

Some will be structural, such as responding to early warning systems as in New Zealand, or quickly deployable and scalable testing and tracing as in Germany, or rapidly deployable ‘critical care’ hospital capacity as in the UK.

There is much debate and discussion about the impact of the Covid crisis on Diversity and Inclusion. There are concerns in relation to how this will set back progress, and that employers will be focused on fighting the fires of survival and thus be inclined to put ‘Diversity and Inclusion’ on the backburner for when they emerge into better times.

The world is focused on the tragedy of the Covid epidemic and the horror stories of death, financial hardship and vulnerability within communities and ethnic groups. As companies battle to survive by rapidly changing their operational management processes, and responding fairly and ethically to the challenges, there are few businesses untouched by this crisis.

Helen Pitcher OBE has been quoted in a People Management Magazine article written by Jenny Roper. In the interview, Helen discusses how the current crisis will change how boards operate for the better.

The Covid crisis has stimulated rapid and innovative thinking, precipitating new developments in many spheres, from drones providing indoor disinfection to homemade face masks. But one of the most dramatic developments in the business world has been the overnight global implementation and leadership of remote working. What was thought to be impossible, has been done. What was thought to hamper effective communication has proved false. What was thought to be a generation gap in use of interactive communication has been blown away. The mass numbers of people working remotely has broken the logjam of many taboos, traditional thinking and general technology inertia.

As we enter a new decade it is an opportune time to reflect on the progress of diversity on Boards and the challenges that lie ahead.

This past decade has been one where female participation in the business world has exploded into the headlines and onto our Boardrooms.

In the UK we started the decade with the Davis Report in 2011 which sort to drive a voluntary target of 25% of women on Boards’ of FTSE 100 companies by 2015. The target was successfully achieved and then superseded by a 33% target by 2020, which is also likely to be achieved.  This model of targeted voluntary compliance has proved successful but there is still much to do in creating further diversity in the executive pipeline.  Targeted compliance has provided a catalyst for increasing gender participation on the executive committee and subsequently feeding onto Boards.  While less explosive and headline grabbing, this approach has largely avoided the accusation of under qualification and under experienced women on Boards, often thrown at the quota approach.

The Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) is seeking a third Independent non-executive to join our Board. They are looking for an individual who is committed to their purpose and who understands the importance of what they do.  CCRC want all of their Independent non-executives to complement the skills and knowledge of the Board. In particular, they welcome applications from experienced non-executives who would have the necessary skills and experience to take on the role of Senior Independent Director. This may include senior experience of the workings of government or of the private sector.