Basic guidelines about effective questionnaire for board evaluation process in Canada

Board evaluations process of Canada based organizations is conducted within the board members of the company to know what the desired target of the board members is, and then make plans to achieve that. It is like self- evaluation of the board of directors of any corporate company. Performance of board of any corporate company is important for its organizational success.

There are many tools required for conducting board evaluations in Canada such as documentation, profile reviewers, questionnaire (survey), interviews, etc. But questionnaire is one of the most effective tools as it provides an individualistic approach of each member of the board about the other members of the board. Questionnaires or surveys are a list of questions which are generally about the organization’s performances like its past project, future goals, desired target, scopes of improvements etc. It is a simple and easy way for board evaluations.

Designing an effective questionnaire for board evaluations of any organization in Canada is the first step to make sure that the conducted board evaluation becomes fruitful. It is important for the questionnaire to have a proper number of questions; not too many not too few. If there are too many questions the board members might get tired, bored or confused while filling the questionnaire. This will ultimately result into getting inaccurate, inappropriate, and irrelevant information. Having few questions in the questionnaires might not fulfill the motto of board evaluation. Questionnaire should have all the categories of questions which can give the answers of ‘who’, ‘whom’, ‘whose’, ‘where’, ‘when’, ‘why’, and ‘how’ of every important aspect.

Language used in the questionnaire should be plain and simple so that every board member can understand it and answer it properly. Using difficult words, unnecessary idioms or phrases can make the questionnaire complicated for the board members, which can result into some Board of members not understanding it; and thus not answering the questions properly. Due to this we cannot get required information and board evaluations can turn into unfruitful messy event.

In Canada, board evaluations using the method of questionnaire is also time saving. According to a famous phrase ‘Time is money’ and hence no one should want to waste it. Framing those questions of the questionnaire whose answers can be given with just a yes or no or a single word accordingly would not only save time of the members of the board but also result in a quick evaluation.

Most importantly, after analyzing the result, answers submitted by board members should be kept confidential. This is because the purpose of board evaluations in Canada based organizations is only to evaluate the performance, capacity and activeness of the entire board as well as each member.

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Professor David R. Beatty of chairmanofboard.com provides corporate governance, board evaluation and CEO consultation in Canada. He offers valuable experience working with global boards and CEOs.