Spencer Stuart’s pulse survey of nearly 900 public and private company directors revealed these and other noteworthy benchmarking statistics on the use of board skills matrices:
Prevalence – More than three-quarters (78%) of public companies use a board skill matrix compared to less than one-quarter (22%) of private companies.
Accuracy – Of those that have them, 82% of public companies and 59% of private companies believe their board skills matrix accurately or very accurately reflects their board’s composition.
Review/updates – More than three-quarters of public companies and over half of private companies evaluate their board matrix annually and have revised their matrix in recent years to add specific skills, experience, and attributes.
Disclosure – More than half of public companies publicly disclose their board matrix compared to just 5% of private companies.
Effectiveness – The vast majority of respondents overall say that their board skills matrix is a valuable tool for succession planning and communicating their board composition to investors and shareholders.
Access additional resources on our Board Composition and Board Recruitment & Succession pages, and see numerous sample matrices in DFIN’s Guide to Effective Proxies.
This post first appeared in the weekly Society Alert!