There is no cookie cutter approach
to board governance frameworks
in Australia and many have evolved their own nuances which need to
be interrogated.
In carrying out our review of the ASX200 we
first considered the Diversity & Inclusion Policy
of a company to see if it explicitly applied to
the directors or the board. Where the policy appeared ambiguous and only referred to employees or other terms such as “at all levels”
the policy was deemed to not include directors.
Once the Diversity and inclusion policy was reviewed we reviewed the Nominations Committee (or Equivalent) Charter to see if there was an obligation to consider diversity and then to the company’s Corporate Governance Statement to see how “diversity” was reported in the public domain. We also considered if the Nominations Committee Charter diverged from the policy.
Further, where the wording of the diversity and inclusion policy is ambiguous this is sometimes clarified by the Corporate Governance Statement or other artefacts.
We accepted a definition as inclusive if it
included the following gender, ethnicity, marital
or family status, religion, culture, language, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability and age. Generally differences in background were called out along with life experience. Given the various policy formats and drafting styles judgement had
to be exercised. We noticed that companies have been reviewing their definitions to include intersex status and other identity definitions.
The ASX200 used for this research was that applying on Monday 22 January 2024. EFT’s in
the ASX200 were excluded from the analysis.
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