Words .....that work

Fighting for good corporate governance is hard enough without the use of words for obfuscation. At the very least, we should be clear about what we want to achieve in appointments to the boardroom. Sometimes - in the UK at least, we are very good at using words that confuse, rather than elucidate. 'City grandee' has become just such an epithet.

On May 16, the FT Lex column headline said:

Thinking ahead clearly isn't a strong point of UK plc.

I say this as we are still talking, two years on, about the serious under-representation of women in business. It has taken us two years in the UK to work out that - oops, there's a problem with the pipeline - and it needs multiple measures to fix it.

I wonder how long it will take before tax breaks are considered in any serious capacity. How about one for maternity ? That would both send a strong mess...

We hear a lot in the UK about 'toning from the top." But - dare I say it - we hear less from the top about the way things should be than we could.

I'm not shy about saying that Ernst & Young regularly stands out in the way it is forging ahead, not just on clever ways to work flexibly as unique human beings  with different preferences on many things including sexuality, or in working for gender diversity, but...

With all the talk in the UK, US and Europe about more women in the boardroom, more women in the executive pipeline and generally better conditions for men and women in the workplace for better business, it is easy to forget something.

Bandwagons - and those who stand up at the front to give them direction- almost always also have a few personal agendas as well.

So it's worth taking a moment to think about a thought that isn't revolutionary : each business w...

The UK's business leaders are acutely concerned about a lack of 'key skills' in their workforces that is needed for growth. They are rating this shortage as the biggest threat to their prospects and calling on the government to place priority on initiatives - such as apprenticeships - aimed at fostering specific skills.

A global PwC survey of over 1,300 CEOS released today reveals that this concern about the availability of ...

It comes as little surprise that the role of RemCo (remuneration committee) chair is now viewed as the most challenging of the committee chair roles in the boardrooms of UK plc. Its only equivalent perhaps, is chair of the risk committee at a financial services company. 

Significant research from headhunters Hedley May leads to these conclusions - and others - that may tangentially be of particular interest to those...

I suspect that it isn't often that the UK's Confederation for British Industry (CBI), which describes itself as the country's "top business lobbying organisation" can spare its President for half a day.

And it isn't every day that FTSE 100 chairman Sir Roger Carr stays  for four hours at an event after spending 10 min...

I started that day off at #FemaleFTSE and I ended it at Ernst & Young at an inclusion event around the PowerList Foundation.

Harry Gaskell

It is the kind of week when I am going to be playing 'catch-up' for awhile, so bear with me.

I had my hand up for a question at the #FemaleFTSE event when the Cranfield School of Management  revealed its latest bombshell findings on the stalling of progress in appointing women to boardrooms of Uk plc.

Only a man asked it instead - well, he used a question to take five minutes to ma...

I launched this blog on February 7, 2011 - Lord Davies was looking into why there was such a serious lack of women in the boardrooms of UK plc and I needed a platform to express my views. I also thought the general level of debate in the media around 'glass ceilings' was shockingly banal.

Having been a headhunter and worked with many of the people who make the decisions at this level, I had some unique insights. I had also only recently made a re-entry into journalism and st...