
In the world of PLC boards, these issues have been tackled by the Financial Reporting Council (FRC) mandating all FTSE 350 listed companies to go through an externally managed process of evaluation against the requirements of the UK Corporate Governance Code at least every three years – and then to report the resulting action plan to shareholders.
The aim of the FRC was to encourage all listed companies to do what the more enlightened ones were doing already – to seek out objective feedback on performance and to be transparent about the outcomes. This process has been generally welcomed by shareholders as it gives a degree of assurance about how a board works and therefore the risks it is managing. It also provides a point of comparison on how seriously a board takes its own evaluation and performance improvement – and by extension how this effects the culture of the organisation it is governing. But if mandatory external board evaluation is such a good thing in larger PLCs, might not the same be true for all boards? There are plenty of unregulated boards in significant but perhaps smaller businesses, and that’s not to mention charities, mutual and public sector businesses.Are boards really so different from each other
To explore the differences and similarities between sectors when it comes to board improvement we recently conducted a survey of over 100 board members. We wanted to see if there were as many differences within a sector as between sectors. The headlines were pretty clear, while boards may have a different missions when it comes to their own operation: the setting of priorities, the way they make decisions, getting access to the right skills, and critically how they view their own performance improvement, there were far more similarities than differences.- Board games and misbehaviour: A tug of war between directors and shareholders
- What makes a balanced board of directors?
- The role of the FD and its power to influence the board
Let’s use what we know works
Our experience evaluating boards across many sectors suggests that one approach to performance evaluation can work for all boards. In fact we are increasingly seeing boards from many sectors now requesting the use the FRC Code as the touchstone of best practice. Experienced NEDs who sit on boards of different sized organisations in different sectors are already familiar with the requirements of the Code and can see its value. One framework used across all sectors could encourage learning across sectors through the movement of NEDs. It could also encourage greater understanding or what makes all boards effective and, most important, greater transparency of board performance. And this might help tackle the real problem – encouraging greater scrutiny of boards that don’t embark on any evaluation of their performance at all.Alex Cameron is director of Socia.
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