Governance comprises all aspects of leadership and decision-making. It’s the structures in place that allow a leader in any organised body to rule or control or dictate actions.
The board members, trustees, and top executives are responsible for guiding the strategic and operational course of the organisation. However, they face the challenge of adapting to evolving legal, regulatory, and financial obligations. Consequently, it is essential for them to have support from a governance expert, who serves as internal counsel on governance issues and can offer guidance on legislative and regulatory matters.
Importantly, effective governance extends beyond mere adherence to regulations. Governance professionals are vital in creating and executing a governance framework that enhances value and meets the trust’s requirements. This supports informed and efficient decision-making, accountability to all stakeholders, and the promotion of ethical practices.
What is a Governance Professional?
For larger organisations, governance is often led by governance professionals who are trained experts in governance practices and policies. For smaller organisations that also have to meet governance requirements, sometimes the governance role is merged into another, such as finance, operations or HR, with the necessary support and training.
The term ‘governance professional’ describes the role at its broadest and most inclusive. This means it does encompass roles such as the company secretary, who are in their own regard well-established and expert governance professionals.
Governance professionals are the trusted advisor to the most senior people in an organisation. They are often at the centre of important events and represent the memory of the organisation, ensuring compliance, coming up with solutions and maintaining ethical practices.
As a relationship builder, governance professionals work closely with the board of directors and the executive team, advising them and supporting them with issues that affect the organisation both now and in the future.
As stated by the Chartered Governance Institute (CGI), “Governance professionals must understand a range of different subjects, including law, finance, strategy, risk, governance and compliance”.
What are the Responsibilities of a Governance Professional?
The responsibilities and contributions of a governance professional are varied and reflect the importance of the role as a trusted adviser to the board.
A key responsibility of governance professionals is to assist the chair in guaranteeing the board functions effectively and makes informed decisions. This encompasses various tasks, including establishing the yearly meeting schedule, creating agendas and assigning papers, recording decisions in the meeting minutes, ensuring that actions are clearly communicated and executed within the organisation, as well as managing public disclosures and notifications to regulatory bodies.
Governance professionals also offer guidance on legal, regulatory, and governance issues related to board functions and are responsible for the recruitment and training of new board members. They actively foster and maintain effective governance practices within an organisation.
The responsibilities of the governance professional can be defined as:
Advising on Legislative, Regulatory, and Governance Changes: Monitoring any developments that may impact the organisation and ensuring the board is briefed accordingly.
Managing Compliance and Risk: Ensure the organisation adheres to relevant regulations, policies, and ethical standards, and manage risks associated with governance.
Establishing Governance Processes: Manage the organisation’s governance structure, including meeting scheduling, agenda preparation, minute-taking, and action tracking.
Establishing Policy Management and Development: Develop, implement, and maintain governance policies, ensuring they are up-to-date and aligned with the organisation’s goals.
Ensuring Board Effectiveness: Support the board in its decision-making process, including conducting board evaluations and development plans.
Maintaining Record Keeping and Reporting: Maintain accurate records of meetings, minutes, and other governance documents, and prepare reports for the board and relevant stakeholders.
Monitoring Stakeholder Engagement: Build and maintain relationships with stakeholders, ensuring clear communication and transparency.
Managing Teams and Projects: Lead a team of governance professionals, and manage specific governance projects, such as developing new policies or implementing new governance frameworks.
How can a Board portal help Governance Professionals?
As technology becomes a larger part of overall business processes, many companies are exploring how they can use various tools available to enhance their corporate governance. In this context, board portals have evolved as one such tool that can help governance professionals achieve those all too important good governance practices within their organisation.
Let’s look at what board portals offer that can help governance professionals:
Instant Board Documents
Traditionally, businesses are heavily reliant on couriers delivering physical board packs to board members. In today’s global economy, nearly all companies operate beyond borders, resulting in board members situated worldwide. Consequently, the traditional approach of sending business materials via courier has become both ineffective and outdated.
Leveraging board management software means:
- Board members can receive their board packs instantly, wherever they are.
- Businesses can reduce courier costs as well as the risk of confidential data either going missing or getting into wrong hands.
- Businesses can reduce costs related to getting and gathering board members to physical meetings if they conduct them online.
- Board members are more productive if they are able to attend board meetings remotely without the hassle of physical presence.
- A more flexible approach to board meetings and business operations in general.
Efficiency and Time Management
Board portals can result in tremendous efficiency gains and improvement of time management. By allowing easy collaboration of documents, as well as ensuring your team members only access the documents and areas of your board portal that they need to, board portals not only improve on efficiency but also restrict potential security breaches.
Meeting agendas can be collaborated on and sent out digitally. Board members can be notified, invited and their responses logged digitally. Board meeting minutes can be taken in real time, saved and archived digitally.
Wave goodbye to the insecure, space consuming filing of paper notes, and keep meeting materials all stored in your board portal. Moving to paperless board meetings brings huge improvements to efficiency in a governance professional’s day to day.
Accountability
Ease of collaboration is undoubtedly a huge benefit of using board portals. However, an equally important benefit is that board portals provide an additional layer of accountability pertaining to board members and internal teams.
For board members, all documents accessed and updated in the board portal are time stamped and noted with who made the necessary edits, while the more efficient nature of your platform means you can provide clearer objectives and agenda items. This helps the entire team to understand which objectives are met and which are not. Additionally, there is a digital audit trail which gives a strong understanding about what is happening internally in your organisation.
Adherence to Regulations
While a board portal itself will not help a business adhere to all the industry regulations and standards that need to be complied with, it will definitely help in putting together a variety of best practices that can help you meet the relevant policies and guidelines.
Utilising board portals significantly enhances the protection of sensitive information and data. They streamline business processes, foster clearer accountability, and improve risk management, which offer numerous advantages for your organisation, especially in the long term.
Convene and Good Governance
A Board Portal is a major step in the direction of good governance. Convene’s Board portal software is designed to create a good governance structure for your Board by making communication easier and more effective, as well as enhancing security. Meeting management has never been easier.
Our comprehensive features include:
- A Document Library, with role-based access to ensure your sensitive documents are protected.
- A built-in Audit Trail, so you can be sure you are compliant with all regulations.
- Integrated Video Conferencing, so you can make the switch from remote to hybrid working seamlessly.
- Surveys, with the option for anonymity, so you can be sure you are aware of your employees’ opinions.
- Action Items, so you can follow up on any tasks automatically.
- Accessibility Features, including text-to-voice, which makes us the leading accessible Board Portal.
- Fully GDPR-compliant security, including AES 256-bit encryption and ISO 27001 accreditation.
You can also hear from our clients about how we have helped their governance teams, and them as governance professionals. Debbie Lannon of Westward Housing said:
“I’m a part of a network of company secretaries and often people will say we’re thinking of changing our software. What do you use? What do you recommend? And I’ve always said Convene. We really love it. It’s just one of the simplest software systems I’ve come across in any walk of life.”
For the software support you need as a governance professional, to ensure good governance for your organisation, choose Convene.
