In May 2019, as part of a partnership with Diligent Corporation, looking at the challenges facing the 21st century board and the company secretary’s role in supporting and guiding chairs and boards to meet these challenges, The Chartered Governance Institute UK & Ireland convened a roundtable to discuss the issues of board composition and diversity from a range of perspectives. What is the size and scale of the challenge that companies face in building a balanced board?
An article drawing together some of the themes that we discussed was published in the June 2019 edition of Governance and Compliance magazine, but the discussion was much richer than we could include in a magazine article and, as we sought to edit it down, that set us thinking about all the issues that we had raised, some that we hadn’t, and where we might take our thoughts further. One of the most interesting features was the way in which so much of what we discussed has been cross-sectoral – the challenge of getting the right people, whatever they are called, on the governing body, whatever it is called, is a challenge for organisations of all kinds across all sectors.
