The attention of our Chairs and ALB board secretaries are turning to how we can most effectively run board meetings once national restrictions are eased. 

Most Arm’s Length Bodies (ALBs) have been running all of their Board meetings, and subcommittee meetings, solely online since the start of the global pandemic. While a few were able to schedule in person meetings in the Autumn of 2020, we have all become adept at making sure online meetings can work effectively to ensure we maintain suitable oversight and assurance for our ALBs.

Having to do a year online has led to some really positive changes, in particular around more targeted, and often shorter, meetings, a chance to build a better meeting timeline, getting a better contribution from all non-executive members, and better enabling a wider range of NEDs to be appointed and attend meetings where travel was previously a restriction. It also makes opening meetings to the public a much more viable option (and for some ALBs having meetings in public is a requirement).

It is worth noting that chairing online meetings can be a challenge. A particular concern is ensuring effective chairing with conversations taking place in different places including over the screen and in the chat function, and sometimes through private chat groups. You also have to rely on all participants having good connection to the meeting.

While we had little choice over the past year as to how we ran our meetings, at some point in the future we will be faced with a wide range of options including face to face meetings, online, a mix of these (some meetings in person, some online) and then hybrid meetings (some people joining a meeting in person and some virtually).

There is little consensus around what might work best, and this is in part due to the differing preferences of individual chairs and what will work best for their boards and ALBs. However, there are some common observations.

Most ALBs have not made a final decision as yet. Some are fairly certain about how meetings will proceed, while in some cases not too much thought has been given to this as yet. For most it is however an active conversation that involves all board members.

There is a clear concern, drawing on past experience, that hybrid meetings are a challenge to make work effectively. The main concern is that hybrid meetings can lead to two tiered participation in meetings, which is the experience people faced prior to the pandemic. A number of chairs are therefore resistant to having them, although most acknowledge there is probably going to have to be some accommodation. 

Having the option to enable board members to join a meeting when they can’t make the location has clear benefits. It seems fairly obvious it should help to continue to attract a more diverse range of board members for whom they don’t have the time to travel or who live further away from the head office where the meetings often take place.

To mitigate against the challenges of running hybrid meetings will require technology to be vastly improved, and will require more financial outlay and preparation time for meetings. It also requires very disciplined chairing, with the challenges perhaps even greater than when meetings are solely online.

There is a clear desire from chairs and board members to get back to face to face at least for some meetings, with most of these indicating this would mean a mix of some meetings online, and some face to face.

A consensus is building that big board meetings with a focus on strategy and discursive topics benefit from being face to face, while sub committees and more operational and emergency matters can probably be run online. One positive consequence will be that sub committees will less likely need to be held on the same day as full board meetings, which previously was often the case to save on travel time.

One general observation is that face to face meetings are the best way to develop board members and build cohesion, an attribute of meetings that is valued by many. Face to face meetings are also the best way to be visible to our ALBs and sometimes the sector, if for example a meeting takes place at a stakeholder location.