Spencer Stuart's annual survey of Nominating/Governance Committee chairs revealed these noteworthy results based on the input of 83 S&P 500 and MidCap 400 participating committee chairs.
Priorities—Just 20% of respondents identified ESG oversight as among their top five priorities compared to 35% last year. Taking the top spot this year by a wide margin is board composition (77%). Other top priorities include CEO succession (50%), board/committee evaluations (performance and effectiveness) (30%), and director onboarding (26%).
Refreshment—Top drivers of refreshment this year were adding new skills to the board and mandatory retirement or term limits, as shown here:
Notably, although still a low percentage, there was a steep rise in replacing director(s) due to underperformance, which came in at 10th place last year vs. 6th place this year.
Recruitment priorities—More than half of respondents identified CEO/COO experience as their top director recruitment priority, followed by digital/tech experience (42%) and operational experience (41%), with the latter representing a significant increase from last year’s 23%. Among those selecting digital/tech experience, 41% cited big data/analytics expertise and 24% cited AI expertise.
Prior board experience and financial experience rounded out the top five, with a much larger percentage selecting prior board experience this year (37%) than in 2023 (11%).
Education—Three-quarters of respondents identified industry trends as their top educational opportunity, followed by technology/digital at 73% and cybersecurity at 70%.
Access additional resources on our Nominating/Governance Committees page.
This post first appeared in the weekly Society Alert!