Board elections: What we're doing differently this year

After a successful call for nominations to our upcoming director elections, we’ve been busy getting things ready for the member ballot. In the meantime, here is a brief peek behind the curtain on how we’re moving from nominations to the ballot, which all our members will all be invited to take part in.

Our work is now almost done.  This week, our Nominations Committee (made up of serving directors and IPSE members) will decide on the candidates to go to ballot.

The goal is to ensure that the choice of candidates our members will see in January's ballot have the strongest mix of skills and experience that the Board needs to succeed, as well as the drive to represent the wider membership at the Board table.

Those who have made it to the upcoming ballot will be encouraged to ‘campaign’ between ahead of the vote; this will be an opportunity for candidates to make themselves known to members and explain why and how they would add value to the board.

Ultimately, it’s the members who make the final call on who joins our Board. So why are we interviewing candidates before the ballot?

As a Board, we each have a legal and fiduciary duty to act in the long-term interests of IPSE and its members. That includes ensuring the Board has the right blend of experience, knowledge and skills to enable help IPSE succeed.

Before nominations opened, we:

• Ran two webinars to encourage members to think about a board role as part of their own career development, and about the IPSE board more specifically. We were delighted by the attendance, engagement and the resulting nominations
• Referred back to an independent Board Effectiveness Review conducted in 2024
• Discussed the experience we were seeking and articulated this clearly in the role profiles
• Reviewed and updated our skills matrix, including weightings linked to the Board Effectiveness Review and the current strategic context for IPSE
• Ensured all serving directors self-assessed against this updated matrix
• Published the skills matrix for candidates to review, making the Board's areas of focus transparent to applicants

We built on past experience and designed a structured, fair, objective and consistent process for good governance. Here’s how we did it:

• Members of the Nominations Committee declared any prior contact or relationship with a candidates; we organised the interview panels to allow for recusals or, if this was not possible, we ensured that we focused only on evidence provided through the written application and the interview.
• All candidates were asked the same questions in the same order within a specific timeframe during an online interview. We pasted the questions into the chat during the interview for easy reference.
• The Committee scored candidates against pre-agreed rubrics that were consistent with the role profiles and the skills matrix, which were available on the IPSE site.

We know that not everyone wants to put themselves forward for a director role. But we are mindful that many of will want to help out in other ways.

This is now on the Board’s radar, and we’re exploring ways to create more structured opportunities for members to be involved in future Nomination Committee activities – so watch this space.

For key information about the director election, and to vote in the ballot from 8th January, head to our Director Elections Hub.