Gender quota to bring more women on to NHS boards to improve decision-making

THE NHS is to introduce gender quotas to ensure a 50:50 male-female split on trust boards, under controversial plans that will also lead to FTSE 100 leaders being sent into ailing hospitals.

Health watchdogs said more women needed to be brought into the boardroom to improve the quality of decision-making, as the NHS faces the worst financial crisis in its history.

The regulator said female leaders were associated with a more “collaborative style of leadership” which could help NHS organisations work together to tackle mounting pressures.

Helen Buckingham, the executive director of corporate affairs at NHS Im- provement, said trust boards needed more skills which had traditionally been seen as “female”. She said: “We need to develop a collaborative style of leadership and, generalising hugely, that is still associated with women.

“The challenges the NHS are facing are such that they can’t be developed by an organisation on their own.”

She said that the quota – which will be set across the whole of the NHS, rather than on individual boards – would be followed by efforts to employ more senior leaders from black and ethnic minority backgrounds. “This isn’t about being politically correct, there is evidence that diverse boards make better decisions,” she said.

Latest figures show two thirds of members on NHS boards are male.

The regulator is also in talks with 15 FTSE 100 companies, including Barclays and Vodafone, about recruiting “top talent” to join the boards of NHS trusts as non-executives.

The NHS recently reported a deficit of £2.45 billion – the worst in its history. Today, monthly statistics are expected to show the health service is failing to meet a host of performance targets.

‘We need to develop a collaborative style of leadership and… that is still associated with women’