Is This a Harbinger of Things to Come?
Korn Ferry, among other sources, is reporting a surge in corporate, for-profit organization boards forming committees related to talent. Describing a hypothetical case that emblemizes the trend,
"It wasn’t the CEO’s performance that concerned the board. The firm had been delivering strong results since he took the helm two years ago. What got the directors’ attention were the social media posts and news stories. Too many were disgruntled employee comments aimed directly at the CEO, questioning his every step. All of it was distracting enough that directors felt they could no longer give the CEO a pass. They would have to address the issue."
"...boards have evolved to focus on talent for the whole company rather than just compensation for the CEO and other top executives, companies have added terms like “people,” “talent,” and “culture” to compensation committee names. In fact, some companies removed compensation from the committee name altogether, renaming it the “human resources” or “human capital” committee."
Given the tendency private, independent school trustees have to channel their work experience into the boardroom, we anticipate a new round of calls from members for their boards to have committees devoted to human resource or "talent" matters. However, bringing this practice into the independent education sector could be problematic. School trustees, especially in day schools, are far less distanced from the "human resources" themselves than corporate directors. Trustees have a more proximate connection to faculty via their children and, therefore, risk being too close to the concerns to render independent judgment. The typical distance—emotional and otherwise—between a director at a publicly traded company and front-line personnel is in orders of magnitude different from schools. Because the independence of governance is always at risk in independent schools. Inserting already compromised trustees into management functions is often a recipe for disaster.
A less fraught approach might be for boards to ask their heads of school to share more information about talent recruitment and retention as part of regular reports. What challenges are administrators facing in terms of recruiting talent? How is the workforce changing and what are the implications for building the faculty of the future? What trends are evident in the realm of compensation and benefits? The goal in asking these questions is not for trustees to solve the problem but to understand how a changing landscape might shape policy and budgets. The board does not need another committee—standing or otherwise—to get the answers it needs to govern well.