Board evaluation, CEO review, quick votes – easy with Aprio surveys

Do you keep saying you’ll start director self-assessments next year? What about assessing overall board performance, or evaluating the CEO? It’s simple to step up your governance game using Aprio’s survey tool.

One-quarter of board’s using Aprio rave about how easy it is to conduct board performance and CEO evaluations, or conduct simple votes using our survey feature. Others Aprio users are missing out! Here are some tips to get your organization started.

Director and board evaluations

If you’re looking to encourage accountability and high standards of performance on your board, then routine performance evaluations are a critical step to ensure your efforts aren’t just admirable talk.

Each director should be contributing towards clear performance expectations and, at least annually, measuring their own contribution. Some boards do peer assessments and overall board performance reviews as well. All of these assessments are easy with Aprio.

Simple steps:

• Identify who will lead the survey. The survey leader will have access to all the results, and open and close the survey. This person also has the most influence so it may not be best for the chair to lead, perhaps a member of the governance or recruitment committee should set up the survey and oversee reporting.
• Identify who will participate in the survey. Like everything in Aprio’s portal, surveys are set up by group. It’s your choice whether participants’ responses are confidential or linked to their name.

• Survey set up –  If you’ve used any other electronic survey tools, Aprio surveys will be familiar. For every question you can decide on your response style such as yes/no, multiple choice with multiple responses, rating scale or open text response.

For an overall board evaluation by all directors, you’ll likely want some “Pick the one answer that best expresses your perspective” questions like these:

For a director self-assessment or peer assessment, you’ll want some questions like these:

• Close the survey. Once the survey leader sees that responses are in (this may take a few days? and reminders) then the leader closes the survey to view results.
• Review report. Each survey has a summary report (how many answered what by question) and source data report (answers by person and overall aggregate). Reports are available for easy export to Excel for further analysis as well.

• Copy and repeat. A year flies by with most boards so Aprio makes it easy to re-run board evaluations annually with the copy and repeat survey feature. Repeating the same survey also helps compare data year over year.
• View archive. See trends over time. Even as board membership changes over time, survey results are archived in Aprio to see board performance trends over time.

CEO performance evaluation survey

We’ve heard confessions from dozens of board chairs that their board’s evaluation of the CEO is ad hoc, and can even get missed in a busy year. If you’re in that boat, keep paddling.

Setting up a survey to conduct a board review of the CEO’s performance is just as simple as doing director and board evaluations. The only difference is that you want the results confidential from the CEO so the CEO cannot be the survey lead. And just like board assessments, once you set up the process, it’s easy to repeat the next year.

Quick votes – best board meeting date to critical motions

Do you struggle with attendance? A survey can help.

For many boards, picking convenient meeting dates has a significant effect on the engagement and contribution of directors. Aprio makes it simple to survey directors on which of three meeting dates is most convenient – then go with the majority.

On bigger issues, when it is necessary to take action between board meetings and it’s not reasonable to call a special meeting, the chair can authorize a vote electronically. The Aprio board portal makes the survey easy, provides an audit trail and makes it convenient for directors to access consistent, adequate information about the motion before they vote. Remember to respect your board’s rules for quorum for the vote, and afterwards ratify the motion at the next meeting of the board.

Ready for your first survey?

Aprio’s survey tool is at your fingertips, and as always we’re here to help.

Contact us toll free at 1-855-552-APRIO or email support@aprio.net

Sources:

• Chartered Professional Accountants Canada, 20 Questions Directors of Not-For-Profit Organizations Should Ask About Board Recruitment, Development and Assessment. 2010.

• Listed – The Magazine for Canadian Listed Companies. Effective Board and Director Evaluations. 2017.

Save

Save

Save

Save