The inaugural Board Diversity Awards will honour business leaders and heads of organisations who are helping to transform boardrooms through inclusivity
The inaugural Board Diversity Awards will recognise boards that have created successful initiatives to improve diversity and inclusion at leadership level across 10 award categories. These include Community Initiatives Board of the Year, FTSE 100 Board of the Year, and Rising Star of the Year. “One of the key things we’ve worked on over the last few years is diversifying the boards of these organisations so that they are reflective of the customers and communities that they serve.“The reason boards are so important is because that is where key decisions are made about the strategy of how organisations move forward with diversity. So unless leaders are really driving and demonstrating change, it’s hard for the rest of the workforce to really believe and buy into it.
Cressida Wyer, Diversifying Group’s head of content said: “We wanted to be really transparent about the judging process. The judges went through a detailed and collaborative judging process together and each nomination was given equal attention and there was no money exchanged. “We just wanted to be different in terms of other award ceremonies where you’re often not really sure about how the nominations or awards process works.
The latest Parker Review report, which announced the results of a 2022 voluntary census highlighted significant progress towards this target.