SPS Human Capital Management Lecturer Dr. Solange Charas recently discussed how organizations can approach diversifying boards of directors during proxy season in Bloomberg.
Every year, company annual meetings serve as an occasion for board retirements and departures. At the same time, this serves as an opportunity to introduce more board diversity. Bloomberg states that “even though women held eleven fewer seats in May than the month before, their share rose to thirty-two percent from thirty-one percent," due to older members stepping down.
Dr. Charas teaches two courses in the M.S. in Human Capital Management program: Transforming Total Rewards and Finance for Effective Human Capital Management. She was the chief human resources officer at Havas Worldwide, Benfield Group, and Praetorian Financial Services Group, and served on the boards of two public companies. She elaborates on the idea that companies might use the opportunity to add board seats during this time, to seat new, desired candidates, while letting others retire on their own time. "Adding members isn’t a bad idea because boards need an increasingly diverse set of expertise as focus grows beyond profitability to topics such as the environment, social change, and governance," she tells Bloomberg.
Dr. Charas is a recognized expert in the area of human capital analytics, and teaches graduate students how to use technology to quantify an organization's human capital investments. "A well-run board can increase profit four percent from the average and a poorly run board can cut it by four percent, Charas said, citing research she did for her doctorate in 2014," writes Bloomberg. "So getting the right mix of people, with the right culture, has to be done well, she said in the article, S&P 500 Boards Have 100 Seats Open to Add Diverse Candidates.
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