30% Club

Growth Through Diversity

The 30% Club was established in the United Kingdom in 2010 by Helena Morrissey, Chief Executive of Newton Investment Management, and now has chapters across the globe. Boyden UK is an active member of the United Kingdom Chapter.

Vision: Gender balance on boards not only encourages better leadership and governance. Diversity further contributes to the improvement of board performance overall, and ultimately to higher corporate performance and results for companies as well as their shareholders.

Mission: Develop a diverse pool of talent for all businesses through the efforts of members who are committed to gender balance at all levels of their organisations. Business leadership is key to the mission, taking the issue beyond a specialist diversity effort and into mainstream talent management.

Values: The 30% Club approach – collaborative, concerted business-led efforts – can help accelerate progress towards better gender balance at all levels of organisations. We do not advocate mandatory quotas; instead we believe that meaningful, sustainable change will result from a voluntary approach.

The 30% Club runs a number of initiatives focused on broadening the pipeline of women at all levels, ‘from schoolroom to boardroom’. We also work to bring about transformation by:

• Encouraging and supporting chairs to appoint more women to their boards
• Providing information and help for businesses trying to improve their diversity at all levels, sharing innovations that work and devising new collaborative actions
• Working with other related groups in the belief that collective, concerted effort can achieve much more than individual initiatives
• Keeping the spotlight on the issue through our ongoing role in the public conversation, on TV, radio and social media
• Staging free, large-scale events to build momentum and evolve thinking around the issue
• Speaking at schools, universities and international women’s events
• Tracking progress towards the 30% target

Boyden UK’s Involvement

The 30% Club’s UK Chapter aims to involve board chairs and CEOs in improving gender balance at the board and senior management levels. By joining the 30% Club, we publicly pledge our support for the belief that having women hold 30% of board seats is good business practice, and share the aspiration to reach this goal.

Boyden was one of the first signatories of the UK’s original Standard Voluntary Code of Conduct for executive search firms, created to address gender diversity on corporate boards. Further, we are accredited under the Enhanced Code of Conduct, recognising executive search firms “at the forefront of helping FTSE 350 boards to enhance their gender diversity”.

We readily acknowledge the important role we play in supporting clients as they take steps to increase the proportion of women on their boards, and actively do so in a variety of ways:

• We help clients develop medium-term succession plans identifying the experience and skills they will need to recruit over the next two to three years. This time frame encourages looking at the board as a whole rather than individual hires, leading to more flexibility in candidate specifications.
• When presenting longlists as part of our search process, we ensure that at least 30% of candidates are women whenever possible; otherwise we justify a lack of qualified female candidates by demonstrating the scope and rigour of our research.
• We ensure that best practices in supporting and enhancing board gender diversity are well-documented and shared internally, and that adherence to the Code is effectively monitored.
• We invest time into developing relationships with the pipeline of future female candidates.

Learn more about the 30% Club and its United Kingdom Chapter.