JD Wetherspoon has appointed four pub managers to its board of directors after a consultation with shareholders and employees suggested it would benefit from having more pub experience at executive level.
Wetherspoon received more than 100 applications from staff nationwide and appointed two employees to full director status and two as associate directors.
“A successful pub company depends primarily on gradual improvements, based on suggestions from employees,” said Tim Martin, the pub chain’s chairman and founder.
“Pub and area managers, and other members of pub teams, have always participated in weekly decision-making meetings, which distil suggestions from the ‘front line’.
“The appointment of employee directors will extend this approach to board meetings and will help to preserve the culture of the company for the future.”
West Midlands regional manager Debbie Whittingham, who joined nearly 30 years ago, and Hudson Simmons, area manager for Sheffield, have been appointed as employee directors with full board director status.
Regional manager for Manchester, Will Fotheringham, and Emma Gibson manager of The Imperial pub in Exeter, have been made associate employee directors. All four will act as directors from today, and will remain in place for three years.
Luke Hildyard, executive director of the High Pay Centre, said on Twitter that it was “a shame they’re all pub managers, and appointed by the board rather than elected by colleagues,” but added it was further recognition for “the importance of worker voice”.
Workforce representation
When Theresa May became prime minister in 2016 she vowed to put worker representatives on boards of major companies.
Workers are represented on the boards of companies in many European countries including Germany, Denmark and Sweden. It is argued that worker voice can help executive teams prioritise long-term decision making, ahead of short-term financial engineering.
But by late 2016 May said that the measures would not be compulsory, saying there were other ways of helping workers’ voices to be heard on boards, such as the appointment of non-executive directors.
In 2019, outsourcing giant Capita appointed two employees as non-executive directors, becoming the first FTSE 250 company since the late 1980s to appoint workers to its board.
The Financial Reporting Council’s Corporate Governance code, which took effect in January 2019, says that companies should use one or a combination of the following three methods to engage workforce representation:
- a director appointed from the workforce
- a formal workforce advisory panel
- a designated non-executive director.
“If the board has not chosen one or more of these methods, it should explain what alternative arrangements are in place and why it considers that they are effective,” says the code.
But a report by the FRC, the Royal Holloway University of London, and the Involvement and Participation Association in May 2021, found that companies could “do better”. Only one company was found to have appointed a worker director following the launch of the revised code, adding to just four FTSE 350 firms with worker directors that pre-dated the code.
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One third (32%) of FTSE 350 firms examined had not adopted any of the three suggested options, instead either choosing to adopt “alternative arrangements” or claiming that their existing engagement mechanisms are adequate to satisfy the code’s requirements.
