Compare your board performance

Comparing, tracking and communicating your gender diversity and inclusion performance is a critical part of understanding and demonstrating your progress as a department, business or community sector organisation.

Setting targets and performance indicators against strategies and actions will not only help you monitor your own performance but allow you to see how you are tracking compared to others. Having the systems and processes in place to collect the information is important. For example:

• Is there a trend in the number of gender diverse candidates nominating and being selected for your board?
• What are others doing that is working well that can inform and contribute to your board?
• What is your target and timeline for achieving gender parity, are you achieving as quickly as others?
• Do you know how many women and men have left your board and for what reason?
• Is the awareness, training and/or education of gender diversity and inclusive behaviour benefiting the board’s performance, decision-making and operations?
• What difference is gender diversity and inclusion on the board making to the outcomes for your department, business or organisations? How will you monitor this?
• Are you activities/program to support building the talent pipeline for women on boards working?

Making the results available should form a key component of your regular reporting process.

Here are some key examples you may consider:

• Overall gender performance
• Performance against targets and KPI’s
• What are the strengths?
• Where are the risk areas?
• How did the organisation achieve the results?
• How does the organisation compare to other organisations?
• What are the recommendations or next steps?
• How do the results compare with the overall strategy?
• What is expected of the board going forward?

Demonstrating continuous improvement, positive results and achievements in gender diversity and inclusion has been known to provide organisations with a significant competitive edge and helps you to become the organisation of choice. This in turn contributes to your succession plan and long-term goals.

So how does your board compare? See an example of the Maturity index tool (PDF) (or DOCX) to assess your organisation's progress.