Baroness Berridge, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for the School System, has acknowledged the vital role that governance professionals play in academy trusts and confirmed that more widely promoting and supporting the role of the governance professional in trusts is at the top of the DfE’s priorities for this year.

Meet Susan Fadil FCG, our 2024 Winner of the Champion for Governance Award.

In this podcast Alex Efthymiades, Director and Founder of Consensio, discusses workplace conflict. Alex argues we aren’t taught the skills we need to successfully navigate conflict; therefore, we avoid it because it feels uncomfortable. However, Alex believes conflict can be positive, enabling us to clear the air and become more productive. She says it’s important to create a workplace environment where healthy conflict can flourish. This can be done by establishing psychological safety where everyone feels able to speak up without being punished. This is particularly important in the boardroom, where constructive challenge is needed to avoid groupthink.

In this podcast Daniel Roach, Senior Technical Lead at Company Matters, discusses the latest developments in ESG reporting.

Meet Kyle Burke as he tells us what its like to work as a Legal Analyst at Tata Consultancy Services.

The AI Office will implement the future AI Act at EU level and it should become a central coordination body for AI policy at EU level and cooperate with other Commission departments, EU bodies, Member States and the stakeholder community.

Electrical power has been restored to Heathrow Airport, but fixing the governance problems which underlay the crisis will take much longer. Daniel Valentine suggests that Friday’s emergency shutdown of Heathrow raises serious questions about both the governance of the UK’s energy infrastructure, and decision making by airports, and provides lessons for all organisations.

In this podcast Kerry Round, Founding Director of Round Governance Services, outlines how the governance of a company will change following an Initial Public Offering (IPO). She covers board structure, responsibilities, composition, and the need for board diversity. The discussion outlines how an IPO will affect important stakeholders such as employees, the policies the company will need to have in place, what disclosures will be required, and which external bodies the company secretary or governance professional will find themselves dealing with on a regular basis. Kerry describes an IPO as a career highlight and the role of the company secretary or governance professional in a listed company as fabulous.

With an ever-growing expectation for companies to know the individuals and partners with which they do business, regulatory penalties have never looked tougher.