38 / 72
31
The Female FTSE Board Report 2016
In addition to looking at the proportion of women on the Executive Committee, we also considered the
roles women hold in these important senior management groups.
The three most common ‘C-Suite’ roles are Chief Executive, Chief Financial and Chief Operating Officer.
From the 79 companies for which we have data, women hold only 10% (18 out of 184) of these roles.
We then grouped all the remaining roles into either Operational or Functional roles and looked at the
proportions of women in each (see Table 9). Of the remaining operational roles, such as divisional or
regional heads, women also only held 10% (35 out of 350). In the functional roles (e.g. marketing,
communications, PR, investor relations, IT, HR, audit, risk, General Counsel and Company Secretary),
women held 33% (126 out of 387). Of the 58 HR directors named on Executive Committees, 35 were
women and 23 men and of the 79 Company Secretaries/General Counsels named, 31 were women but
48 men.
Overall, these trends demonstrate an under-representation of women in C-suite roles and operational
executive roles.
3.4.4 Looking ahead
We draw three main conclusions from this analysis of gender diversity across FTSE 100 Executive
Committees:
––
There is a lack of transparency and inconsistent reporting on the gender composition of Executive
Committees, which limits our insight into relevant talent pipelines to the board. Organizations should
be encouraged to monitor and report such data in a more rigorous manner.
––
Women are under-represented at Executive Committee level (19.4% overall), especially in C-suite and
operational roles (women make up 10% of senior executives in each). This shortage of women in senior
roles will make it difficult to reach and sustain the 33% target for women on boards.
––
Organizations should be encouraged to increase not only the overall percentage of women on the
Executive Committee, but particularly women in operational roles. With purposeful talent management
and succession planning this could conceivably be substantially changed over the next five year period.
In a survey last autumn,
4
19 of the UK’s largest institutional investors stated that the continuing drive to
increase women on boards was important for British business; that the current voluntary approach was
effective; but that more work was required to better utilise female talent. When asked where the focus
of work should next be, 58% of investors recommended extending the scope to include the Executive
Committee and/or direct reports to the Executive Committee.
TABLE 9: EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE ROLES BY GENDER
Executive Committee Roles
Percent of
Women
No. of
Women
No. of
Men
C-Suite
Chief Executive Officer/
Deputy
7
72
Chief Financial Officer/
Finance Director
9
70
Chief Operating/
Operations Officer
2
24
10% 18
166
Operational
Divisional/ Regional Heads
10%
35
315
Functional
Divisional/ Regional Heads
33%
126
261
FTSE 100 Companies