PwC recently released its annual corporate directors survey on board room practices and perspectives. Some highlights of the survey’s findings include:
- There has been a marked increase in the hours directors dedicate to board work;
- Dissatisfaction with the performance of an individual fellow board member is fairly common and presents an ongoing challenge—with aging and lack of expertise cited as the key reasons;
- 37% of boards have no clear allocation of specific responsibilities for overseeing major risks among the board and its committee’
- Over 50% of directors believe that some form of annual education should be required; and
- Directors believe proxy advisory firms have a lot of influence, but nearly half of directors describe the thoroughness of those firms’ work and the quality of their recommendations, as “fair” or “poor.”
Survey results were based on the responses of 860 directors, 70% of which serve on the boards of companies with more than $1 billion in annual revenue.