how to start a next generation board

Anyone working in a big organisation can find it hard to make change happen or to feel their voice is heard. Decisions about issues that affect you or your work are commonly made by others far removed from your day-to-day working life.

To address this, employees can set up so-called next generation boards to provide insights, feedback and suggestions to senior managers. Membership of such a board — which usually comprises younger, mid-level or under-represented workers — offers a way for them to learn about the business, how changes do get made, and how to contribute to decisions.

But the boards, also called shadow boards, are a relatively new idea, and the first experience for many employees will be around the challenges of setting one up. How should they go about it?

First, they should be clear about what it aims to achieve, both for senior leaders and for prospective members. Sheri Hughes, global diversity, equity and inclusion director at recruitment group Michael Page, heard about the idea of a next gen board from an industry peer, and discussed it with her boss. Michael Page now runs 10 shadow boards across the world.

“We talked about whether we’ve got a forum for accessing more diverse voices,” she says. “We were honest enough to know our boards, both in the UK and North America, were extremely white, pretty OK from a gender perspective but, certainly in visible areas of diversity, it was lacking.”

This has to be a platform that we invest in for at least 10 years

Rebecca Robins set up a next generation board at brand consultancy Interbrand, where she was chief learning and culture officer. When she pitched the business case to senior executives, “I said it should not be considered as another project or initiative,” she explains. “This has to be a platform that we invest in for at least 10 years.”

It also helps to be clear which cohorts you are targeting to join the next generation board, and why.

Robins says her board was aimed at under-thirties “very intentionally, to pair up [employees early in their careers] with the leadership team at the time”. This was particularly important for a company that works with brands where many of their customers are in that younger cohort.

At law firm Norton Rose Fulbright, lawyers below counsel level, and business services staff below director level, were encouraged to apply to its next gen board, says Claudia Van Gruisen, senior associate and the board’s co-chair. “The idea is it’s a real cross-section of different disciplines, people from different offices.”

A next generation board allows employees to raise issues with the senior executives who attend the meetings, and for business leaders to gain a new perspective on problems affecting their company.

Van Gruisen says anyone thinking of joining should come prepared with ideas. “I put forward having the opportunity for more secondments at associate level. One of the other board members has since done a secondment from the Amsterdam office to the Singapore office,” she says.

Sometimes a long-standing leadership team will assume that they already know the problems and the answers, says Hughes at Michael Page. So the next generation board needs to have time and space to bring their ideas to the table.

“There was an element in our meetings: we [senior leaders] will come to you [next gen board] with real things that are happening in the business,” she says. But employees should not just “play on what was already our thinking”, Hughes advises, and instead “come back to us with an idea.”

Robins notes that, for women joining the boards, it is important to set boundaries and make sure they are “not overloaded with projects, they’re not the fixers per se”. It is, in a way, an opportunity to learn to say no to the tasks often dumped, even if unconsciously, on women.

Joining a next generation board is also a useful way for women to be more visible in a company. According to a recent report by global consultancy McKinsey, women remain under-represented at every stage of a business.

Van Gruisen adds that meeting colleagues through a next generation board gives members the chance to engage with people across the business who they probably would not otherwise come across — opening up different career possibilities.

A next generation board can create “a halo effect” for members, agrees Robins. The members positively influence the company and are, in turn, more visible to colleagues. At Interbrand, “they were presenting on global town halls. This was not [something] on the side — it was very central,” she stresses.

When setting up or joining a next generation board, remember to consider some basic practicalities, though.

Van Gruisen says Norton Rose Fulbright’s next gen board terms — such as how many people join it, or for how long — have changed, especially as members are promoted. The terms “have evolved to account for those sorts of scenarios”.

Michael Page’s Hughes points out that “when you start to think about a global agenda, that does become much more tricky to manage”. For example, when assessing how to align the employee benefits programme with sustainability efforts, they found that, internationally, “laws are very different — some countries are so much more advanced on electric cars”.

The next generation members saw first-hand that “you need all these different people to get things over the line . . . It really helped appreciation of the different business levels”.