Australian companies will need to report on progress against gender diversity targets as of January 2011 under recent changes to the ASX Corporate Governance Council guidelines, however, many Boards have not yet had the discussion on how to set measurable objectives in this area.
ASX listed companies will need to disclose in their annual report statistics on their achievement against gender objectives set by their Board as well as the proportion of women on the Board, in senior management and employed throughout the whole organisation, under the changes recommended by the ASX Corporate Governance Council.
The changes also stipulate that Boards set up an appropriate committee for recommending strategies to address Board diversity, considering diversity in succession planning and having a charter that regularly reviews the proportion of women at all levels in the company.
However, recent research from Chartered Secretaries Australia (CSA) found that 77 per cent of Australian companies do not have a diversity policy in place.
As such, companies will need assistance in implementing gender diversity strategies in order to address gender imbalance at board and senior executive level in the future, according to CSA.
“Substantial work needs to be done on undertaking diversity audits to understand the areas of inequality that exist in companies, and developing a business case that addresses both the diversity challenges and business opportunities,” said Tim Sheehy, CEO of CSA.
“Boards will also need to examine their director recruitment processes, including their selection criteria, to ensure a diverse range of candidates is considered.”
The 2009/2010 Benchmarking Governance in Practice in Australia survey also found that there is still no clear consensus in the ASX top 200 companies about how best to structure Boards when dealing with risk management.
Almost one-third of companies believe that having a stand-alone risk committee is ideal for companies, with another third believing it best to combine risk with audit and the remainder seeing it as the role of the Board as a whole.
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