Corporate Governance Administrative Support
for PAs & Executive Assistants / Secretaries
WORKSHOP OUTLINE
This Workshop is designed for PAs, EAs and Board Secretaries dealing directly with a Board of Directors to enable them to understand what good governance looks like and develop ideas on how the EA can assist the Board, CEO and Management to achieve it. This workshop will examine what their administrative role and responsibilities are as a PAs, EAs and Board Secretaries, and take them through best practice examples of Board agendas, papers, and minutes.
The workshop will look at best practices in preparing board minutes, updating and managing board policies, maintaining attendance logs, handling monitoring report worksheets, organizing all of the board’s documents including bylaws, committee, minutes, etc.
PARTICIPANTS WILL GAIN VALUABLE INSIGHTS INTO:
- Preparing board minutes according to the most up to date best practices
- Ensuring that board policies in all categories are accurate
- Managing the board’s attendance logs and make sure they are accurate and consistent with the board’s policies
- Ensuring that the board’s record of monitoring reports is accurate and up to date
- Following governance best practices to ensure the integrity of your board’s documents
WHO SHOULD ATTEND?
- Personal Assistants
- Executive Assistants
- Executive Secretaries
- Board Secretaries
- Board Administrative Support
- Executive Managers
- Assistant Company Secretaries
ABOUT THE FACILITATOR – PROF. ANTON ROODT
PROF. ANTON ROODT is a lecturer, executive coach, consultant and writer in leadership, strategy, governance and social entrepreneurship. He lectures at the Rotterdam School of Management (RSM) Erasmus University in The Netherlands, Graduate Institute of Business Science (GIBS) University of Pretoria, The Pakistan Institute of Management (PIM), Karachi, Pakistan, DCDM Business School, Mauritius.
He did his initial academic studies in Linguistics and Philosophy. Post-graduate studies followed at the University of Texas, USA as recipient of the Rotary Foundation Fellowship. He was subsequently appointed tenured professor at North-West University South Africa. He left the academic world for the corporate business sector, holding executive positions at prominent South African companies including Sasol and GenCorp. He is an associate of SPESA (Social Private Equity South Africa), a business initiative that promotes social entrepreneurship in partnership with corporate funders and investors.
He is passionate about strategic leadership and good governance in a living systems context and is a wilderness enthusiast.
AGENDA
- Governance - definition and why
- Governance and management
- Why good governance is so important for an organisation
- What areas in a business are affected by good governance
- What matters does the Board address?
- What every EA needs to know about governance policies
- Board practices: meetings, papers, committees, work plan, induction and reviews
- Effective Board decision-making procedures and tools
- Meeting rules
- Increasing quality of debate and engagement during meetings
- Examples of Board ineffectiveness and its impact on management
- How the CEO and the EA prepares for a Board meeting
- Roles and responsibilities of the Board and Chair
- Role of CEO and management
- Board expectations of CEO
- CEO and Chair’s influence on Board effectiveness
- Factors which influence level of Board engagement
- Code of Conduct
- Relationships - Board and Management, Chair and CEO, EA and Chair/Board
- Changing role of and expectations placed on the Board
- The Companies Act
- Directors’ Duties
- Trustees
- Common law cases and SA legislation you need to be aware of
- The responsibilities of the Board Secretary before, during and after Board meetings
- How to prepare for Board meetings
- What needs to happen when?
- How EAs can help facilitate the working relationships between the Executive and Board
- The EA’s role in supporting good governance in the Boardroom
- Looking for areas of improvement: What could you do differently?
- Board Secretary’s duty in recording conflicts of interest
- Handling sensitive and confidential information
- Purpose of Board papers
- How to prepare and assemble Board papers
- Layout, content, and language
- Examples of Board papers
- Circulating the papers
- Confidentiality and security
- 10resolution
- Ensuring that minutes contain sufficient information to describe how Directors reasonably came to reasonable decisions
- What is required to be stored for seven years (and why) from agendas and minutes
- Modern methods for signing and securing minutes
- The usefulness of maintaining the policy register