Introduction:
Board evaluation is an annual process by election or legal mandate in the majority of businesses worldwide. Results of board evaluation procedures can include everything from relatively simple process modifications to board replacements.
98% of the corporate boards conduct board evaluations. and a third of the process includes reviewing the board as a whole in addition to directors, and committees. To improve the efficacy of the Board, individual and collective responsibilities of its directors must be ascertained. Directors must also be made aware of the degree of performance that is required of them. At the organizational level, board level, and individual board member levels, the assessment of boards and directors is devised to help strategically improve performance. Additionally, the evolution of evaluation as a practice is mainly based on enhancement of the board’s effectiveness in terms of its leadership, cooperation, accountability, decision-making, and communication.
The board evaluation process involves:
- Formulating a questionnaire for areas of evaluation;
- Obtaining responses of individual directors to the questionnaire on a varying rating scale;
- Conducting interviews with individual directors
- Analyzing the responses to the questionnaire and interviews
- Confidentially reporting the findings resulting from the analysis to the Board
The Board deliberates on the report, develops an action plan, and periodically reviews the progress of implementation of the actions. These actions were previously performed manually, but innovative technologies like Dess Digital Meetings can help in making the board and performance evaluation process more efficient and effective.
Role of Technology in Board Evaluation:
Without Dess, Boards, and directors conducting performance evaluations encounter inefficiencies and inaccuracies including lack of convenience, accuracy, security, and secrecy. Peer assessments among directors are an area where such a situation can be startling. These are inherently delicate activities that call on directors to evaluate the performance of their fellow board members. Peer evaluations of directors must be completely secret to be effective; otherwise, there is a significant chance that directors won’t be able to provide transparent feedback, devaluing the review procedures.
Board evaluations can benefit from Dess in various ways. It may be used, for instance, to create complex graphics and other visual aids for inclusion in agendas and reports, which when combined with directors’ scoring and descriptive answers to open-ended questions gives quantitative and qualitative information at a precise level. As a leading board portal and agenda management system, Dess can be used to automatically generate individual and combined peer assessments for each director, as well as reports for the Board of Directors, CEO or Managing Director, and Chair evaluations as needed.
Board Management Software and How It Enhances Board Evaluation:
Dess’ board portal software provides the best technology for improved board evaluation in addition to a holistic agenda management software and minutes management solution. It is robust and specifically engineered with years of market research from Corporate Secretaries, Board of Directors, Corporate Governance experts, and technology experts to provide an overall easy-to-use governance management solution.
Commenting on the digital board evaluation facility, Dilip Ganeriwal, Founder and Managing Director of Dess said, “Digital collaboration is today at the heart of all engagements. Our focus is to constantly improve ourselves to ensure Dess fulfills every requirement of leadership and board collaboration for our clients. With the Dess Board Evaluation facility, we are leading the way to make complex performance assessments easier, more intuitive, and more accurate.“
Some of the features in which Dess Digital Meetings can help Board Evaluation are:
- Directors have flexible facilities to anonymously vote and offer suggestions
- A tool that the Board Chairperson can use to address any committee or board performance issues
- Anonymous voting on decisions that are to be taken as discussed in the board or committee meeting.
- Paired with easy-to-use features like fingerprint login, digital signature, and facial recognition, Dess can help conduct attendance pre-meeting. with end-to-end board meetings software covering pre-meeting, during the meeting, and post-meeting board and committee activities.
- Dess Digital Meetings’ Commenting and Annotation features can be used to mark important text for self or write/draw on the page while discussing to better illustrate the Director’s feedback in the agenda before, during, or after meetings.
With the growing impact of corporate governance, the importance of systematic performance evaluation in boardrooms throughout the world is rising. Boards must also acknowledge the value of the evaluation process as a tool for developing moral character and working as a team. An unified paperless meetings software like Dess Digital Meetings can work as a compliance solution which makes Board evaluation much more user-friendly, flexible, intuitive, and accurate.
To know how Dess can help your board evaluation process, please contact [email protected]
