Some parts of this guide list actions your board must take. Other parts of the guide give your board a range of options to tailor for your circumstances.
If your board, a director or chair need support, reach out to your portfolio department.
As per the Public Administration Act 2004, your portfolio department has a responsibility to help your entity with administration and governance issues.
You need to assess the performance of boards and directors to maintain the board’s integrity.
This includes:
You assess board performance to help:
Section 81 in the Public Administration Act 2004 and the Code of Conduct say your board must assess performance.
Your board must have policies and procedures in place to set out how you:
You can choose a person or a group to assess your board’s performance. You don’t have to use the same person or group each time.
You can assess performance with:
Assess performance with internal people every year.
Assess performance with external people or third parties every 3 to 4 years. You could consider conducting an external assessment more regularly if you are on the board of a larger entity. The timeframe for an external assessment could align with a board’s maximum term.
Compare the results from internal and external assessments to get a broad view on your board’s performance.
You can use a third party to assess all or part of your board’s performance.
They must:
You may want to use an external person if your:
You may use the services of a professional consultant to do a performance assessment.
If you’ve exhausted the options above for a third party performance assessment, please review the Administrative Guidelines on Engaging Professional Services in the Victorian Public Service before engaging a consultant.
Work out the scope of how you want to assess your board’s performance.
Here are some examples:
Assess if your board meets the requirements of:
Assess your board’s strategic leadership, such as:
Assess your board’s governance arrangements, including the board charter.
Consider how effective these are and if the board needs to review them.
Review how your board has delegated authority to the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) or sub-committees, such as:
how effective this has been
how your board retains oversight of its powers or functions.
Examine how you run board meetings, such as:
Assess your board’s management risk, including how effectively you:
Assess how your directors interact with each other.
Assess how your board interacts with stakeholders.
Consider things such as:
Review the things that support the board to earn and maintain the public trust.
This includes the quality of all relevant:
Check how your board’s work aligns with the Code of Conduct and public sector values.
Your board chair must maintain an up-to-date skills matrix.
A skills matrix will help you identify:
Where skills shortages are identified:
The minister often makes appointments to public entity boards.
It's part of the minister’s role to ensure directors bring the right mix of skills and experience to the board.
This includes recruiting board members that reflect the diversity of the Victorian community – see Diversity on Victorian Government Board Guidelines.
If there is a shortage of a particular skill your chair can provide directors with opportunities for training. This can include:
Your chair can also raise any identified skill gaps with your portfolio department and minister for future recruitment.
Use our skills assessment template to record the skills of your board members. It'll auto-populate the results of your assessments in a skills matrix for you.
Examine if your board can oversee your CEO effectively, such as:
Examine how effective your board’s relationships are with key stakeholders or ask them what they think. Stakeholders include:
Review how your board oversees any public funds and assets.
How you assess the chair and each director’s performance is different to how you assess your board’s overall performance.
You must assess the chair and each director’s performance. We recommend an annual review where you:
This may help directors on your board:
You need a separate process to assess your chair’s performance.
This is to address issues not covered when you assess the performance of directors.
Seek advice from your portfolio department about who can assess the performance of your chair.
The chair’s performance is often assessed by your portfolio department, in consultation with the Minister.
Here are some examples of what to include:
Explore questions such as:
How well does your chair:
How does your chair manage how they assess directors, such as:
You need to assess these areas for both the chair and individual directors:
How much does the director participate in and contribute to the work of the board, such as:
Explore questions such as:
Assess all directors on their leadership qualities.
In their role on the board, how does the director:
Explore how the director uses their:
Directors are expected to contribute to all decisions, including those outside their scope of expertise.
Identify any training or upskilling that could further develop their capabilities.
To get the most out of how you assess performance, think of some of these factors.
Take timing into account when you assess performance.
Remember to:
When you assess performance, define who is responsible for:
Agree on the scope of what you’ll assess before you do it, such as:
Your scope must include any requirements in:
Explain your approach to privacy in how you assess performance, such as:
Agree on how you’ll report on your results, such as:
Agree on how you’ll assess performance including methods that will:
You can use all or some of the methods below to design an assessment process suitable for your board and entity.
Survey the views of participants to:
Send your survey to senior executives as well as board members. This helps give you a richer insight into how your board is performing.
Consider including opinions from senior executives to avoid pure self-assessment by the directors on your board.
To check your own biases of how you’re performing:
This helps you get an honest look at what your strengths are and where you need to improve.
Have a group discussion as a board to:
You can:
By engaging directors in the process, assessors can understand what directors consider important. This leads to discussions focused on outcomes and solutions.
A group discussion is a facilitated conversation about the board’s performance.
A group discussion can be facilitated by:
A group discussion is a type of assessment that has many benefits, including:
The objectives of a group discussion are to:
There are many different formats or approaches you can adopt for this type of session, including:
You can discuss topics you’ve identified through other assessment methods or forums.
Some topics may be:
Survey stakeholders on if your board is meeting its goals and providing value to the community.
Your stakeholders may include:
Tailor surveys to each stakeholder group.
Hold a confidential question and answer session for opinions on your board’s work.
Run them in pairs, such as between:
You can send questions for these sessions in advance so people can prepare their answers.
Feel free to complement these with unprepared questions for more discussion.
Examine your board papers to:
Review your board’s, chair’s and directors’ performance results each year for a clear view on:
Hold meetings between the chair and each director for a clear view on how each director has:
As a board, agree to when and how you’ll report on your results.
This may look like:
If you discuss your results as a board, you need to balance:
Always de-identify any performance results and share them as a summary of all results.
Report on board results as a group. But only report on individual results between the chair and the individual.
Table and record assessment reports in the minutes of your board’s meeting.
You may be required by the law or a ministerial direction to report on your board’s performance to your portfolio department or minister.
Seek advice from your portfolio department on what you need to report.
Under section 81 of the Public Administration Act, you must report any major risks identified during the assessment to your relevant Minister and Secretary.
Once you table your board’s results, your board may have some recommendations to discuss and adopt.
If a third party made the recommendations, review them as a board and decide which ones you want to implement. If needed, seek advice from your portfolio department.
When your board adopts recommendations, you must:
Your board is responsible to ensure recommendations are implemented.
For simple recommendations, assign them for action as soon as possible.
For complex recommendations, you may need an implementation plan.
For recommendations about directors:
For all recommendation types, schedule reviews to check if a recommendation achieved its intended outcome.
In most cases, your chair is accountable to the minister for their performance.
For guidance on how your chair manages their accountabilities, seek guidance from your portfolio department.
If your board is covered by the Public Administration Act 2004, you must have a process in place to deal with poor performance of a director.
Poor performance can take a range of forms, such as:
Always take action to support a director to perform highly.
Here are some examples on how you can identify and manage poor performance:
If you’re concerned about your chair’s performance, get advice from your portfolio department.
Misconduct or failure to declare conflicts of interest are considered more than poor performance.
These issues will need to be addressed through the appropriate processes.