By Colin Heyman, Lead Associate, and Tahir Idris, Equality & Diversity Manager at Together Housing

It’s a question I’m often asked: how do we get more diversity on our boards? It’s a constant challenge for many – indeed I would say the vast majority of – organisations, both in housing and other fields.

Present boards are predominantly white, middle-aged, and often mainly men too; and despite efforts to broaden the composition, efforts at further recruitment yield the same candidates.

It’s clearly time for more action on this issue and in particular for doing things differently. If you always do what you always did, you’ll always get what you always got, as they say.

I remember a meeting in an organisation in the third sector, with a multimillion-pound budget and a real commitment to diversity in many ways, between a group of diversity champions there and the head of governance.

To become a board member under its normal recruitment procedure, there were certain things that are essential (the usual things actually): experience of leadership; managing large budgets; governance.

It actually took us a substantial amount of discussion to realise that. Yes, of course you need that experience on your board, but not EVERYONE needs it; and by recruiting people who may not have these competencies but that bring other skills and expertise (for example, on diversity practice in organisations) you’re recruiting people who can bring different things and make the board more effective and increase its potential.

Below, Tahir Idris talks about what they did at Together Housing– a wonderful example of diversifying your board:

When I joined Together Housing there was a real energy to crack this seemingly insoluble challenge. Part of that commitment was to give me the flexibility to do things differently, if required, to achieve that aim.

So, with the able support and encouragement of Governance Manager Adrian Gordon we set about the task. The wording on the job advert and application pack was key. It clearly reflected our desire to attract more ‘diverse thinking’ and that women and BME applicants were most welcome. This was reasonably subtle but also, I hope, clear about our intentions.

It appears to have struck the right tone as we not only attracted 38 credible applications from all backgrounds, we also had plenty of applications from white, older males too. True diversity! We invited every applicant to our open day to learn more about the role and so that we could, again, communicate how committed we were to diversity of thought.

We also admitted we hadn’t got it right previously. The day allowed people to relax and be themselves. We also set a challenge: in a paper, presentation, audio or video message, tell us what you’ll bring to improve our diversity performance.

After receiving a variety of submissions, it was only at this late stage that we shortlisted. Why? Because by not ruling candidates out at the first hurdle, people new to these processes have the best chance to shine.

We decided to give 20% weighting to hard skills and experience and the remainder to emotional intelligence and the content of the submissions. It isn’t easy to do recruitment differently; it’s such an ingrained process. Thinking outside that box was a true challenge. But we felt we were making some real progress, without necessarily making tokenistic gestures.

The final candidates were invited to a comprehensive assessment day; again, emotional intelligence played a major part of our considerations. However, we also recognised that a board member’s role requires a set of hard skills too, so these considerations were still in the mix.

In the end the final six made themselves quite apparent. The remainder were all credible board members too, and it was a humbling experience to have such a range of people there on the day. But we wanted ‘diversity of thought’ and in the end, of the finalists, we had four
women, half of them BME, and two of the six were under 30. We absolutely did not seek such a mix but were delighted that the process delivered such an outcome.

All six are now on their journey to future board life through a comprehensive training, development and mentoring programme which is designed to build resilience to avoid ‘leakage’, which is always a risk, and equip candidates with the appropriate skills and knowledge to put themselves forward for any future vacancies – at our organisation or, indeed, another. As it happens, one of the cohort has already been appointed to one of our subsidiary boards.

As part of the review of the process, we canvassed our applicants on why they applied to Together. A heart-warming theme became apparent: they felt welcome. There were no guarantees with any of the above.

The key message is: just give it a go. It won’t always work perfectly. I do find, particularly with diversity, that we hold back from doing things for fear of getting it wrong and end up handwringing instead. That fear doesn’t stifle other, massive, decisions. Why does it paralyse our efforts to be more inclusive?

If you want diversity of thought in your organisations, prepare yourself to think differently!

When Tahir and his colleague Adrian presented to our best practice group meeting, certain things struck me:

Firstly, it was wonderful to hear about an example in practice that had yielded results, at least in terms of the diversity of successful candidates. Secondly, I was struck by some of the unconventional thinking during the process; things that could be applied much more widely, including, to some extent, the recruitment of employees:

1. The focus of the recruitment was to improve diversity practice in the organisation, answering an organisational need, not just to get board members. Too often board recruitment is general. The search for board member diversity was not tokenistic, or because it was a good thing to do, but to answer a business need.
2. The idea that you’ll invest in a process and then, in development of those who are successful, grow a panel of people who can fill further vacancies, without any certainty that they’ll join your organisation. This implies a preparedness to invest in the common good as well as your own organisation.
3. The emphasis on emotional intelligence rather than experience. Whilst it might not be possible to apply this completely to recruitment of employees, it seems clear to me that the ability to work as a team (which emotional intelligence gives you to a large extent) isn’t given enough priority in our recruitment processes, despite the increasing emphasis being put on it as something crucial for the organisation to work.

Board diversity can yield big dividends for organisations. It can diversify thinking; it can help diversify the workforce; it can improve diversity practice.

You may not want to do it exactly how Together Housing did it, but the work there, for me, shows the way forward in how we can improve our practice in this area. It’s actually not that difficult. All it needs is a bit of support from the top and a willingness to think differently. (Actually, that can be difficult in some organisations!) So, I would say, give it a go.