Climate Change Enters the Board Room

The INSEAD Corporate Governance Centre and Heidrick & Struggles conducted a global survey of board directors. The goal of the survey was to investigate how boards understand and are coping with the process of decarbonization and how far climate change has been integrated into their oversight responsibilities. Some key findings are that 63% said that their board has a very or entirely clear understanding of the strategic risks and opportunities presented to the company by climate change. Nearly half, 46%, said their board has insufficient or no knowledge of climate change’s implications for financial performance. Read the full report here.

Mitigating the Risks of New Executive Integration

Joining a new organization as a senior executive may feel like you’re flying a plane while still figuring out all the controls. Odgers Berndtson interviewed CEOs and senior executives in the United States, Canada, the UK, and China to better uncover the biggest struggles executives face in a new role. What they found was that the pandemic caused the odds of success for newly appointed executives to become even more lopsided. According to McKinsey and Company, between 27% and 46% of newly-placed executives are seen as a failure or a disappointment within two years of joining an organization. To help mitigate the risks of executive derailment in the early stages of executive integration, Odgers Berndtson outlined four strategies to implement. Read the full article here.

The Current State of CFO Hiring

Leaders of top executive search firms identify post-pandemic CFO search trends and analyze the related changes that are likely to appear as more organizations switch from surviving and recovering to looking for growth in a reconstructed economy. While a CFO’s work has changed due to the pandemic, how CFOs find work and how companies find them has also changed. Specific aspects of the search process, for example, screening and outreach, may leverage technology, others (think assessing virtual leadership) may demand greater originality. This leaves candidates, no matter how experienced, having to sell their value propositions in a new and different marketplace. Read the full article here.

High Turnover Rate Among CHROs

Stanton Chase examined the flow of information between the vice president of human resources and the CEO. There is much evidence that the vice president of human resources is growing in importance and in competitive advantage. Many companies now embrace the role of human resources at the boardroom table, reflected in the title of “Chief Human Resource Officer." Across industries, there has been an increasingly high level of turnover among CHROs. The main factor for the high turnover is unclear job descriptions and expectations. It is frequent for organizations to not outline how the vice president of human resources will fit within the organization. Read the full article here.

Compare Your Compensation to Other Executives

BlueSteps’ new plugin, The Pay Index, allows members to access The Pay Index’s full suite of pay tools, including executive compensation reports comparing salary, bonus, equity grants, long- and short-term incentives, benefits, and change-in-control provisions for more than 50,000 executive-level roles. This lets executives have a better understanding of how their pay compares to their peers, which is especially useful when negotiating a job offer. Read the full press release here.