In a 2019 article entitled âThe Future of the Compensation Committee,â we observed that compensation committee members were, organically and of their own accord, expanding their purview and areas of interest beyond executive compensation and into an increasing array of pay and people issues.Â
In 2020, we introduced the term âhuman capital governance,â based on growing board member interest in a broader set of human resource issues, including talent acquisition, DEI, fair pay, benefits access and culture. We speculated at the time that 2020 would be the âyear of the Sâ in ESG, even though social issues had been gaining only limited traction at that time. Little did we know that the pandemic and other earthshaking events of 2020 would amplify and accelerate board-level interest in both the E and the S in ESG and raise concerns about risk.