| In February 2021, the Global Network of Director Institutes (GNDI) published its Global Director Survey 2021. The GNDI is a network of leading director institutes from around the world and comprises 22 institutes representing more than 150,000 directors and other governance professionals around the globe.
The survey, based on responses from 2,000 corporate directors around the world, found that two-thirds of board members were spending 50 percent more time on board service—or more. Not surprisingly, much of this new effort has been COVID-19 related. Among the challenges that a substantive number of board members highlighted are the pandemic’s effect on the operating environment (56 percent) and virtual meetings (39 percent). But while board members have been learning to adapt to virtual strategy meetings, they’re also feeling strained by them. The GNDI survey found that just less than half of board members (49 percent) found virtual meetings as effective as in-person ones. Those board members seem to be missing the kinds of connection a Zoom session can’t provide. By a wide margin, the biggest challenge respondents said virtual meetings presented was “losing nonverbal communication.” And substantial proportions of board members cited issues with technology (36 percent) and participation from each director (30 percent). The report suggests that future board meetings may need to be more bite-sized “to take advantage of the unique benefits that virtual meetings may offer. This may mean meeting more often with management teams for shorter and more-frequent real-time updates, reserving in-person meetings for specific board activities, such as onboarding or tabletop exercises, and distributing full-board and committee meetings across more, but shorter, meetings.”
Download the report here
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