On Wednesday 21st October Inspiring Governance joined forces with the Institute of Directors (IoD) to support the launch of their new report looking at the parallels between school and corporate governance.
Dominic Judge, Director of Inspiring Governance co-delivered a webinar at the IoD designed to encourage major employers and their staff from the corporate, public and not for profit worlds to get involved in supporting school governance.
Wednesday’s IoD webinar was a follow up to a previous ‘call to arms’ to support schools originally issued by the Secretary of State for Education, Damian Hinds and the Director General of the IoD, Stephen Martin. They made this call to 30,000 of the UK’s leading businesses at the National Governance Association’s annual conference in June of this year.
In his original call to arms, Damian Hinds highlighted the multitude of benefits to employers and staff of getting involved in supporting schools – through not just giving employers the ‘opportunity to invest in their local community’ but raising awareness of the reciprocal benefits employers can secure for their staff who are governors – ‘with the strategic thinking involved, the challenge of managing resources, of recruiting and retaining the best people. How can you beat that for personal and management development?’
Dominic Judge echoes the double benefits for business, “With corporate social responsibility at the very top of today’s agenda for consumers and employees alike, school governance has the capacity to meet expectations on community outreach whilst providing the opportunity for personal and career development for those who become governors.”
My advice to businesses would be to follow the Secretary of State and IoD’s recommendations that businesses take a look at the Inspiring Governance platform for advice about how employers can work with us to get the best placed fit for their staff’. To find out more about what staff are saying about their experiences of being a governor and the personal benefits to them and their businesses, please visit our case studies.
Being a school governor is immensely rewarding and is a real opportunity to put something back and support the life chances of future generations. As the Secretary of State Damian Hinds said; ‘few other volunteer roles are likely to be as challenging and rewarding, and this can have a positive impact on staff confidence and commitment to their chosen career’.
If you would like to hear the about the IoD’s new report and the many benefits of employers getting their staff involved in school governance, Wednesday’s webinar can be found here.