The quality of corporate governance an organization receives depends on its board’s composition and its ability to self-evaluate performance. For no small number of boards, elf-evaluation remains wishful thinking. If you find yourself planning to introduce it every year, and never seeing plans materialize, this New Year may be the time to change it. Board evaluations improve accountability and hold directors and the CEO to high performance expectations. They also help directors identify the obstacles standing in the way of their effective good governance. Every organization needs a process that makes board self-evaluation simple and effective.
If you’re already using a board portal, you’re half-way there already. Unfortunately, not every organization makes the most of the tools at their disposal. According to board portal solutions company Aprio, one quarter of the boards using their solution say the portal is an easy answer to running board self-evaluations, performance reviews, and votes of all kinds. The other three quarters aren’t making use of the features available to make self-evaluation a simple process, which means they’re missing out on an insightful process designed to improve board performance.
Using a board portal like Aprio makes board self-evaluation too easy to skip. Using a board portal, you can reduce the process to just a few simple steps.
#1 Choose a Survey Lead and Participants
In the interest of objectivity, it helps to choose someone other than the chair to lead the survey. You can then select participants from any board portal group, whether it’s a committee or all directors, and determine whether responses will be confidential or whether their name will appear.
#2 Set Up the Survey
With a board portal, setting up a survey is straightforward. You create custom questions and decide on the format for answers: Yes/No, multiple choice, rating scale, or open text responses. A common format is multiple choice, with directors choosing one statement out of several that best expresses their views. Peer and self-evaluation often use a rating scale.
#3 Use the Report Summary
A board portal will collate the results into an easy-to-use report and they can also be exported to Excel. Save past surveys and compare them over time to identify trends in board performance and evaluation.
One of the great things about using a survey through a board portal is that you don’t need directors to attend a meeting to conduct it. It can all be done through the portal, so that you don’t have to pick meeting dates that are convenient for everyone. Board portals make it simple to regularly evaluate performance and if you have questions about board governance and how a board portal can help, start booking demos from board portal solutions companies.
Any organization that strives for accountability should be conducting board self-evaluations. Evaluating a board’s composition, its procedures, and its structure is a good governance best practice. When directors have the opportunity to evaluate their own contributions and the board’s processes, organizations will see the results.
Founder Dinis Guarda
IntelligentHQ Your New Business Network.
IntelligentHQ is a Business network and an expert source for finance, capital markets and intelligence for thousands of global business professionals, startups, and companies.
We exist at the point of intersection between technology, social media, finance and innovation.
IntelligentHQ leverages innovation and scale of social digital technology, analytics, news, and distribution to create an unparalleled, full digital medium and social business networks spectrum.
IntelligentHQ is working hard, to become a trusted, and indispensable source of business news and analytics, within financial services and its associated supply chains and ecosystems
