Since Lord Davies published his landmark report on women on boards in 2011 almost a third of non-executive director appointments in FTSE 350 companies have been women. ‘This is extremely encouraging,’ says Carol Arrowsmith, partner in Deloitte’s executive compensation team, ‘though we still need to look hard at the number of female executive appointments.’

To support the drive to get more women into the boardroom, Deloitte has introduced a programme for senior women to help them familiarise themselves with Boardroom practices and dynamics, and to be best placed to move onto a Board. The Deloitte Academy’s first Navigating the Boardroom: Women on Boards programme began in September 2011 with 18 senior women, mostly nominated by the Chairs of FTSE 100 companies on the basis of their potential to be considered for a non-executive director position.

The content of the programme is delivered by senior members of the business community and our in-house experts; and, it covers a range of subjects including governance and shareholder engagement. A second group of 18 women have now taken part in a subsequent programme.

In our own leadership team, women now hold 14 per cent of Executive roles and 17 per cent of roles on the Board.  In our 2011 annual report we published a target of 25 per cent of Board roles to be held by the end of 2013 and for 25 per cent of the Executive Group roles to be held by women by 2015.