Board Evaluations - a look inside the top 200 UK companies

The opportunities for senior governance professionals to provide services for board and committee evaluations in the New Zealand market are significant, and Members are urged to consider advancing a strategic element in their services past the role of the functional managing the secretariat. Governance professionals have a unique role in corporate structures founded on independence and impartiality, and this platform offers the potential to make an exclusive contribution to shaping a boards performance.

Board evaluations are not just about governance, structures and compliance, but go further to how the board is performing in its responsibilities to all stakeholders. Directors aspire to the credo that "nothing is managed unless it is measured" and then set out to measure every other person's contribution but their own. ICSA has conducted research for a number of years and focuses on the top 200 UK companies and the principles and outcomes of their survey are likely to be mirrored in New Zealand.

ICSA's purpose in offering this annual review is to promote greater interest in the virtues of well-conducted evaluations of boards, committees and directors; and in the belief that genuinely rigorous and honest board evaluation is a valuable tool for helping to develop better performing boards. Evaluations in themselves will not bring about the improvements. What really matters is the rigorous assessment of the board's functions and the quality and honesty of the board discussion which follows the evaluation and the implementation of the actions agreed by the board.

By way of example the role of the Secretary in Inmarsat PLC [Page 38] is described;

The main elements in the evaluation process were:

• individual directors and committee members completed separate evaluation questionnaires regarding the processes of the board and its committees, their effectiveness and where improvements could be considered. They also undertook a peer review in which they assessed their fellow directors performance;
• each of the non-executive directors had a discussion with the company secretary; the results were compiled and analysed by the company secretary and circulated to the full board; and
• the board considered the results of the evaluation process as a specific item of business.

Members and Affiliates are invited to review the latest ICSA Board Evaluation Review of the UK top 200 companies 2010 ... READ MORE. The 2011 review will be made available to Members and Affiliates as soon as it becomes available by way of a further Technical Brief.

The 2010 Review is an extensive document of 73 pages and all Members and Affiliates with a genuine interest in advancing board effectiveness will find a review of considerable value.