Higher Ed Governor Diversity: All Above Board?

Still a long way to go

A recent Equality Challenge Unit report includes a series of commentaries from university leaders stressing the importance of equality and diversity for institutional excellence and success mission delivery:

Vice-chancellors and principals from across the sector outline their conviction that equality and diversity are integral to being an excellent university in a report launched today by Equality Challenge Unit, the higher education equality body. The launch takes place at the Committee of University Chairs national meeting in London.

The rationale for equality and diversity: how vice-chancellors are leading changereport is part of a Higher Education Funding Council for England diversity summit initiative to address the lack of diversity at senior management, leadership and governance in HE. Based on in-depth interviews with 12 university heads, the report reinforces the importance of putting equality and diversity at the heart of a university’s mission. For those interviewed, a university that didn’t value staff or student diversity simply couldn’t be excellent.

The report highlights the essential role that vice-chancellors and principals can play in leading an institutions’ ethos. The benefits of this approach in the 12 universities include: increases in the number of women at senior academic level; increased success in attracting staff and students from overseas, helping to meet widening participation goals, and improving overall performance and the institution’s position in rankings.

Commitment from leaders is one thing but addressing the issue of diversity at executive and governing body level is another.

Personnel Today has a story on a new report from CIPD, Gender diversity in the boardroom: reach for the top comments that while many companies have sought to improve the level of female board representation, there is, unsurprisingly, much more still to be done to redress the balance. The report notes that in the four years since the government-commissioned Lord Davies report into the number of women on company boards revealed the “shockingly low” level of female executive directors, there has been an increase in women on boards of just 1.8%. The publication also notes:

While 60% of businesses surveyed disagreed with mandatory boardroom targets, the CIPD believes that the most effective ways to improve diversity include voluntary targets, greater awareness, improved monitoring and introducing sustainable strategies.

It is, however, asking for a “voluntary target” of least 20% of female directors among FTSE 100 firms by 2020.

The report also revealed that more than a quarter (28%) of organisations do not monitor the gender profile of their workforce at all, with just under half (49%) monitoring it at all levels. However, 89% think that a good balance of gender diversity can improve effectiveness in the boardroom, with 64% saying that the best way to do this is to introduce an open and supportive culture.

Dianah Worman OBE, diversity adviser at the CIPD, said: “Boardroom diversity is not a numbers game, and not just about women. It is also not just about the boardroom, but rather understanding and monitoring the entire workforce in order to create clear talent pipelines that allow women to reach the top.

“Seeing is believing and that’s why our specific call to Government is to have a separate voluntary target of at least 20% for female executive directors on the boards of FTSE 100 boards by 2020, so that we can have a true goal and measure for progression.”

Worryingly, the report highlighted that 44% of employers were not even aware of the Lord Davies review. Additionally, Worman is concerned that the majority of improvements have been made in non-executive positions, saying that “the number of women in the top-spot executive positions and visible to the wider organisation still only accounts for 8.4%”.

So quotas, voluntary or otherwise, for boards is one approach. Diversity in recruitment is another and requiring head hunters to introduce quotas for long lists for senior positions has also been proposed. Ben Tucker of Minerva writing last year on WonkHE reported on the agency’s data on the proportion of women progressing through selection processes for senior roles:

Of the assignments that have progressed to shortlist stage or completed since we began, we measured ratios of women at (a) advertisement response stage, (b) longlist stage and (c) shortlisting stage.

The outcome was heartening, showing progressive increase in the proportion of women at successive stages – 24.9% of advertisement respondents were women, growing to 31.3% at longlist stage and at shortlist 41.9%.

This was pleasing on two levels. First it showed that these shortlists averaged out at well above the quota recommended in the report (a relief given that, although we have been focused on gender balance in our work, we hadn’t been thinking about quotas).

Second, and more importantly, it suggests to us that the intervention of headhunting, if made sensitively and intelligently, can attract a stronger field of female candidates than advertising alone.

Again, sounds like progress.

But most interestingly of all is this EAB comment on a Harvard Business Review report which notes how far US boards are from getting the balance right and the benefits which accrue when they do. According to the story only 16% of board members in the USA are women. Those that have a stronger representation actually perform much better in all sorts of ways:

Having women widely represented on a board of directors has been found to enhance collective intelligence and boost performance, but the U.S. continually reports low levels of female board members, around just 16%. Writing for the Harvard Business Review, Laura Liswood—secretary general of the Council of Women World Leaders—examines how Norway’s board quota system, which requires that 40% of board members be women, has impacted the country’s boardroom culture.

Aaron Dihr, an associate professor a York University’s Osgoode Hall Law School, conducted a qualitative, interview-based study of 23 male and female Norwegian corporate directors who were appointed to boards both before and after the quota was implemented. Dihr says he wanted to determine how the 40% quota would affect how the board made decisions, as well as the overarching cultural dynamic.

According to Dihr’s findings, introducing at least three women to organizations’ boards allowed for a variety of perspectives, experiences, and angles that were different than those of their male counterparts. Further, the study also found that female leaders were more likely than male leaders “to probe deeply into the issues at hand” by asking more questions, which enhanced decision-making.

In addition, women were more likely to ask others for their opinions, ensure everyone at the table had his or her voice heard, and move the group away from expressing favoritism. Many women appeared to be uncomfortable making decisions without fully understanding the implications.

So far so good, but there are some really clear advantages identified here:

Altogether, Dihr found seven advantages to having women sit on boards with men:

Improved communication;

Enhanced decision making and recognition of the value of dissent;

Improved crisis management and risk mitigation;

Made positive changes to boardroom culture;

Made positive changes to men on the board’s behavior;

Created a more ordered work environment; and

More tightly monitored management.

But, lest we be accused of an overly optimistic view, there are downsides too:

However, the study did find some difficulties to heterogeneous boards. For instance, some boards that included women took longer to make decisions and experienced more conflict because more perspectives were heard. In addition, boards that were improperly managed tended to foster a culture of distrust and dissatisfaction.

Overall though you have to say that the evidence looks overwhelming. But more than that, a balance at the most senior levels is just the right thing to do.