Spencer Stuart's annual survey of Nominating/Governance Committee chairs revealed these noteworthy results based on the input of 78 S&P 500 and MidCap 400 participating committee chairs.
Priorities over next three years—On par with last year, taking the top spot again this year by a wide margin is board composition (74%, representing a slight decline from 77% last year), followed by CEO succession (60%, representing an increase from 50% last year), which is commonly overseen by the Nom/Gov Committee.
ESG oversight continued a measurable decline from its peak of 65% in 2022 to 35% in 2023, 20% last year, and 8% this year.
Similarly, board diversity fell to 1% this year from 37% in 2022, 25% in 2023, and 11% last year. Among the 33% who indicated they are making changes to their board diversity disclosures, a plurality are removing individual director diversity statistics and 23% are adding aggregated statistics.
Refreshment—On par with last year directionally, top drivers of refreshment this year were adding new skills to the board and mandatory retirement or term limits, as shown here:
Notably, replacing existing directors due to underperformance increased to 17% this year, from 7% last year and 1% in 2023.
Education—Three-quarters of respondents identified digital/tech as their top educational opportunity, followed by industry trends at 55% and cybersecurity at 32%.
Recruitment priorities—A majority of respondents (60%) identified CEO/COO experience as their top director recruitment priority, followed by digital/tech experience (51%) and global perspective/experience (31%) from 51%, 42%, and 22%, respectively, in 2024.