Member Article

Tackling the boardroom gender gap

Quotas for women or targets with a timetable? Whichever incentive you choose to boost the number of women on large company boards it’s going to make little difference if a pool of some of the best talent in British leadership and management is ignored. Senior women with skills honed in the charitable and not for profit sector are consistently overlooked by the corporate world but could successfully join the pipeline of candidates for FTSE 100 boards.

Why is it then that the skills that have produced some of the most successful brands in Britain are ignored by the corporate sector? Voluntary sector skills in stakeholder management, in holding on to an organisation’s vision and fundamental purpose in testing times, in accounting to many different partners, funders, communities and service users, and in creating a sustainable future through complex strategic planning, could be applied as much to the corporate world as to the voluntary sector.

Of course, there are differences between the not-for-profit and private sector. Although many charities are involved in mergers they need answers to different questions to those that are asked in the corporate world of mergers and acquisitions. But the process of due diligence is not very different, nor is the need for stakeholder management, maintaining investor confidence and consumers’ trust. The corporate sector needs to focus on shareholder value and market sentiment: the voluntary sector needs to focus on stakeholder confidence and maintaining their brand and reputational capital.

If you can learn one set of accountability, performance and investment frameworks and have experience in using a set of subtle and complex levers in one world, surely these are transferable to other sectors. After all no one thinks it startling that people go from the corporate sector to the charitable sector in both executive and non executive roles. Why should the exchange of skills and experience not be the other way too?

So what can be done? A recent programme at Cass Business School, supported by Newton Investment Management and NCVO, aimed to tackle this. It brought together female CEO’s of some of the country’s biggest charities - organisations with turnovers of between £100 and £300 million and workforces of up to 50,000 – to build on their expertise with seminars covering the key differences between private and voluntary sector board work. Taught by Cass faculty, the programme covered topics such as corporate finance, mergers and acquisitions, commercial strategy and governance. There was also networking events, where the CEOs got to meet head-hunters who recruit for company board members.

The programme has already enjoyed some early success. Lord Davies, who also sadly forgot the charitable and voluntary sector in his 2011 report on women on boards, is now a convert. So too, as a result of the programme, are many City headhunters.

As British businesses seek to reflect the diversity of their consumers and employees in complex global markets they are aware of the need to utilise the best talents and the most diverse experience in their governance. The lesson of this innovative programme at Cass is that bridges can be built between sectors, experience is transferable , diversity should be valued and no talents should be ignored in the search for excellence and growth.

Lynne Berry is a Senior Visiting Fellow at Cass Business School

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Cass Business School .