Odgers Ray & Berndtson An interview with Virginia Bottomley and Iain McNeil

 
Diversity in the boardroom is an idea whose time has come. It’s an ambition worth aspiring to, according to leading executive search firm Odgers Ray & Berndtson.

Latest research shows that women make up just four per cent of listed company directors and only one per cent of non-executive directors are from black and ethnic minority groups.

Odgers has developed a two-pronged approach to tackling the diversity issue. Virginia Bottomley, who was the youngest woman in the Cabinet alongside Britain’s first female Prime Minister, is a director with the company and has taken up the issue of getting more women on to boards as something of a personal theme. At the same time, Odgers has also set up a diversity practice, headed by consultant Dr Jyoti Kanwar. The aim is to encourage the company and clients to think about diversity when making appointments.

But director Iain McNeil insists the company is not on a mission. “We are not preaching here. There’s nothing evangelical about it. What we are doing is making the point that diversity is good for the board. There are so many global businesses around now. If you are a diverse, multi-layered, multi-national business, it makes sense that your board reflects that diversity.”

That said, Odgers is committed to the concept of appointing on talent and eschews any notion of introducing a quota system to bring about greater diversity in UK boardrooms.

However, McNeil concedes that creating more diverse boards will take time, and he has the statistics to back up this assertion. As the biggest advertisers of executive positions in the broadsheet newspapers, Odgers’ statistics reveal that only 10 per cent of respondents to executive vacancies are women – a figure that has not budged over the last five years.

Change will come about, he says, but it will be later rather sooner. “It is not just a question of changing attitudes. It is also a question of time. It will take some time for these talented, non-traditional people to work their way through.”

In a paper titled “How to give oomph to your board meeting”, Virginia Bottomley points out the business benefits from having a diverse, talented board. “It reduces the risks arising from everyone thinking the same. A monoculture will not always test its own assumptions. That leads to mistakes. Recent research suggests that groups that are more diverse in skill, knowledge or experience have the potential to generate more high-quality solutions to problems.

“But,” she concludes, “just as familiarity is no guarantee of quality, not every ‘non-traditional’ person is right for your board. Nor is being different enough in itself – the board is not a committee of representatives, each arguing their corner, but a collegiate team, sharing responsibility for decisions.”

 
 Virginia Bottomley explains how to give oomph to your board meeting