According to a poll by The Chartered Governance Institute UK & Ireland and governance recruitment specialist The Core Partnership, 82% of company secretaries have seen their workloads increase since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, with 49% stating that their workloads have increased significantly.

Despite this, the permanent headcount in secretariat teams has only increased for 24% of company secretarial departments, which suggests a shortfall in the volume of talent required to deliver for organisations.

Jon Moores, Managing Director & Recruitment Partner at The Core Partnership says: “We are witnessing a shortage of talent in the Company Secretarial and Governance market. There is strong lateral movement with a desire for Company Secretarial professionals to consider changing roles as well as a pull from a large number of newly created positions.

This downward pressure on supply is fuelling significant salary rises particularly at the junior to mid-senior levels where there is the most demand.”

Peter Swabey, Policy and Research Director at the Institute adds: “Governance professionals have seen their workload increase quite dramatically since the start of the pandemic, which is unsurprising given the increase in board and committee meetings that many organisations have introduced to deal with the fallout from the pandemic.

Governance professionals perform a crucial advisory role to the board and it would be highly undesirable for this to be jeopardised because they are dealing with unmanageable workloads that put them at risk of burnout.”