Premium-listed companies have been put under pressure to make their boards representative of their employees by the revised UK Corporate Governance Code. There is now a "comply or explain" requirement on all UK premium-listed companies to appoint a director from the workforce, or alternatively to have a formal workforce advisory panel or appoint a designated non-executive director for workforce relations.

This notion is far from new; the revised Code reflects a trend in continental Europe for over two decades. Germany, France, Finland, Austria, Denmark, Sweden, Hungary and Norway – to name but a few – all have a regulatory frameworks that require some level of employee representation on the boards of certain companies. Thousands of companies in continental Europe now have worker-director positions and data suggests that this has directly impacted on business by increasing productivity.

In the UK, a few premium listed companies have opted to move ahead of the regulatory requirement and have had worker-directors for some time.

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