It’s a woman’s HR world

A human resources note: headhunters Russell Reynolds say more than two-thirds of chief HR officers in the FTSE 100 are women, and this reflects a global trend.

In fact, around the world female HR leaders hold the torch for female boardroom representation with women taking only 9% of CEO appointments since 2018, though doing a little better with 21% of the CFO jobs. Women have taken 61% of the top HR positions during the same period. In the FTSE 100, it is 68%.

Anna Penfold, a Russell Reynolds expert, says it’s good news that women do well in HR. “However, the benefits of gender diversity also need to be felt across the entire leadership team.

“Too often, the CHRO is the sole woman’s voice in the senior executive team. The CHRO is an increasingly complex function and key ally for the CEO, but we must not let progress in board diversity come purely from one profession.”

Could not agree more.

Some board do, some boards don’t

The UK is braced for audit reform. Well, to be honest, it has been for years, but the new Labour regime has promised to get it kick started following years of delays under the previous government.

The reforms may not be the only change needed for the world of accounting. Anthony Carey, veteran of Mazars (now Forvis Mazars), has a letter in the Financial Times  this week arguing for regulators to address other fundamentals.

Carey says UK accounting fails to address the ubiquity of intangible assets and the development of “sustainability standards” (shortly on the cards for mandatory use in the UK) should be fully integrated into financial disclosures. So work to be done there.

Then there’s the thorny old issue of whether assets are recognised at “fair value” or “historic cost”. Carey saves some spiky remarks for this one.

“The fact that some assets have gained significantly in terms of their carrying amount—and some boards decide to take undue advantage of this for dividends and buybacks rather building their businesses for the future—is not so much a problem of accounting as of corporate governance, and possibly a problem of taxation, with boards, presumably supported by their investors, finding it acceptable to take an unduly short-term approach.”

Feeling seen, guys? You should be.

Do the evolution

Further governance concerns are cropping up about artificial intelligence. In Raconteur this week, legal eagles have been pontificating about the problems… and the list is long: privacy, IP rights, potential bias, ethics, cybersecurity. It’s enough to make you go back to mail order catalogues.

Certainly enough to make a CEO wonder whether the new tech is worth it. But there’s a bigger problem looming: the continual adjustment required as tech develops at an unprecedented pace.

“The core challenge for business is that AI policies, protocols and contracts,” says Herbert Smith lawyer Alexander Amato-Cravero, “can quickly become outdated as technology, regulations and market standards rapidly evolve.”

You’ve got to run to keep up with the tech.

It’s a material world

News from the proxy season coal face: fund management giant Vanguard says it didn’t vote for a single one of the 400 “environmental or social” shareholder proposals this season. Nor, it has to be said, did Vanguard vote for “counter” proposals, those that sort to “rebuke” companies for pursuing climate change mitigation policies..

However, Vanguard is at pains to point out its voting decisions does reflect its general support for policies on society and the environment.

“Rather it can be attributed to our assessment that, in each of these cases, the proposals did not address financially material risks to shareholders at the companies in question, or were overly prescriptive in their requests—including, for example, proposals calling for specific greenhouse gas emissions targets or third-party audits of aspects of portfolio company operations.”