“Whilst we’ve got some problems in the business, I also know that all of the answers are already here.” That was new Tesco boss Dave Lewis talking in a company interview posted last week.
That quote stuck with me as we focused on the crucial issue of trusteeship, and within that the challenge of diversity.
In any executive group, or any trustee board, for the answers to be found the right people need to be asking the right questions.
Most people would agree it is good for a corporate board to reflect its employees in order to make decisions that are good for all.
But I would argue that this is especially the case in a defined benefit trust-based scheme, where decisions are being taken on behalf of members, all of the time, mostly without their say-so.
Any DB or defined contribution scheme member would want representatives who represent them, as far as possible. Yet for half of scheme members, that is not often the case.
Trustee boards are overwhelmingly male, and sometimes elected that way. As AHC’s Karen Partridge explains in the latest Any Other Business, even where women are the majority of scheme members, female candidates finish last.
Illustration by Ben Jennings
Is the answer to let only women on the list? “We do not believe that it is lawful to address under-representation by longlisting or shortlisting only female candidates to the detriment of male candidates,” the Equality and Human Rights Commission concluded earlier this year.
Positive discrimination will still have its supporters as a correction to historic imbalances, though.
Of course. diversity does not just come down to gender. The Pensions Trust’s attempt to remove any conscious or unconscious bias towards a certain gender or a familiar-sounding name from its board elections is a brave answer to this question, and one that was controversial within the scheme.
It does work against transparency, a crucial element of any democratic process. But then again, what’s in a name? The question will be whether the result justifies keeping this information off the ballot. A fascinating case study.
Ian Smith is editor of Pensions Expert. You can follow him on Twitter @iankmsmith and the team @pensions_expert.
