The OnBoard Boardroom Insights Survey, now in its fourth year, identifies critical trends and universal challenges shaping board effectiveness. Drawing from over 350 global professionals across sectors, the survey explores technology impact, concerns, and priorities. This analysis serves to reveal key patterns that affect boards in every field.
This year’s report includes findings from survey responses by more than 350 board stakeholders serving a variety of industries and organizations across the U.S. and Canada. The greatest share (34%) were from nonprofit organizations while 23% were from education. Fifteen percent came from the financial services industry, namely banks and credit unions. Examples of other industries include consulting, aviation/aerospace, energy/utilities, and tourism.
This year’s report features an addendum report based on more than 1,400 survey responses from board professionals who considered OnBoard in the past 18 months.
The findings, alongside the Insights Survey, indicate that the methods used to manage board meetings can significantly impact effectiveness.
There appears to be a strong link between ineffective meeting preparation and issues like poor cybersecurity confidence and subpar communication and collaboration between meetings.
For example, only 25% of surveyed board professionals utilize digital solutions or specialized board management software for preparing and distributing materials. Further, more than 13% of boards still depend on printed paper, while a significant majority (62%) primarily use email and PDF for their planning and distribution processes.
These somewhat outdated preparation methods suggest significant opportunities for boards to adopt technologies that can bolster their cybersecurity and overall effectiveness.
Board professionals surveyed while considering OnBoard revealed an additional insight about how they envision technology supporting their effectiveness goals. The majority (92%) of all professionals surveyed saw centralized communication and documents as the most desired outcome, followed by improved meeting preparation (85%), and the ability to provide accurate, timely information (77%) as top goals when considering a tech solution for board meeting management.
Lastly, board professionals who participated in the OnBoard discovery survey shared information about their current board’s size. When combined with board member ineffectiveness estimates by industry (see p. 8), an “at-a-glance” comparison reveals the estimated number of ineffective board members in each sector.
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