We conclude our Rock and Roll themed week by ending with the first rock and roll concert performed to benefit a worthwhile cause. It was, of course, the Concert for Bangladesh, held in Madison Square Garden, NYC in 1971. It was actually two benefit concerts organized by George Harrison and Ravi Shankar to raise international awareness and fund relief efforts for refugees from East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). According to Wikipedia, “The concerts were followed by a bestselling live album, a boxed three-record set, and Apple Films’ concert documentary, which opened in cinemas in the spring of 1972. The event was the first-ever benefit concert of such a magnitude and featured a supergroup of performers that included Harrison, fellow ex-Beatle Ringo Starr, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, Billy Preston, Leon Russell and the band Badfinger. Decades later, Shankar would say of the overwhelming success of the event: “In one day, the whole world knew the name of Bangladesh. It was a fantastic occasion.”” Hoping to raise $25,000, the concert raised just under $250,000.
I thought about Harrison’s decision to help in the best way he knew how in the context of the ongoing struggle to engender Board of Directors gender diversity, both in the US and abroad. I recently had the opportunity to visit with Rakhi Kumar, the Managing Director and Head of ESG and Asset Stewardship at State Street Global Advisors (SSGA). We discussed the firm’s role in advocating for greater Board of Director gender diversity. SSGA began its campaign last spring when it placed the statue of Fearless Girl in the middle of Wall Street, NYC, and she became an overnight international sensation and became a symbol for diversity and lack of diversity both at company boards and in society. From there SSGA identified three markets, the US, Australia and UK where it screened companies that had no women on boards and took voting action if they would not have a discussion to understand how they approach diversity. This campaign was expanded in the fall to companies in Japan and Canada.
One key theme is that while gender diversity goes across the organization, the Board seats and indeed senior management positions often become a pipeline issue. While many companies desire to have qualified female employees or candidates to become directors on board, they do not know how or where to find them. This lead SSGA to put together a short series of questions which a company can use as a self-assessment and then analysis for gaps in their gender diversity program. It was presented by SSGA State Street President and Chief Operating Officer (COO) Ron O’Hanley, in a speech to the fourth biennial Breakfast of Corporate Champions hosted by the Women’s Forum of New York on November 14, 2017.
The SSGA questions and other factors to consider as discussed with Kumar are as follows:
First, are you assessing unconscious gender bias in the director search and nomination process? And if you think your company is the exception on this issue, you probably haven’t spent enough time examining it. It begins with the pool you are researching as candidates. Are you unconsciously putting on constraints such as looking for candidates who have served as a Chief Executive Officer (CEO), CCO or some other top corporate position? The reality is the talent pool is already unreasonably reduced.
Second, are your companies actively assessing the current level of gender diversity within your management ranks? It’s not only about the Board. Are you keeping diversity metrics around the percentage of new hires, managers and executives? Are you assessing current levels of women or different levels of management? What is the number of potential female candidates you currently have in place. Eventually your pipeline will need replenishment to create more women candidates.
Third, are you acting on those metrics? Are you establishing goals to enhance gender diversity on the board and within senior management? Are you tying those goals to business scorecards, performance and other key metrics? Are you tracking these metrics and are you setting long term goals to broaden Board diversity and gender diversity at every level of your organization?
Fourth, do you have “diversity champions” on the board and within management? Kumar said this doesn’t “mean token figureheads — but leaders who are engaged on this issue and who support the initiatives to meet these goals. This does not have to be a woman, but you must have someone who is committed to this process for promoting the identification of gender diversity, asking tough questions of management if the program is not moving forward and watching the pipeline by considering how the program is functioning at all levels of the organization.”
Fifth, is gender diversity something your company actively communicates about to employees, shareholders and the broader public? The conversation about gender diversity in the boardroom should not be confined to the boardroom. Here a company must not only talk the talk but also walk the walk about gender diversity. It needs to be a leader in their industry and in their sector. There must not only be transparency but also accountability for the entire program going forward.
I found the questions that SSGA has laid out as a practical way to think through the gender diversity issue but also a wider variety of topics. For instance, in the area of compliance expertise on the Board, as required under the new FCPA Corporate Enforcement Policy, companies can use this same approach to develop compliance talent for a Board. For additional information on SSGA’s Board gender diversity efforts, see the following:
To listen to my podcast of Rakhi Kumar on SSGA’s broader efforts to promote gender diversity at corporate Board’s listen to Episode 13 of Across the Board.
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