DMJ & The Governance HOT 100 - An exercise in Refinement

It has been a very busy time for DMJ since the announcement of the 2023 governance HOT 100 winners 2 months ago. As we all look forward to the winner’s party in June of this year, I wanted to take a moment and explore how the awards have evolved over the last 4 years.

It is hard to believe that we announced our first-ever HOT 100 winners back in early 2020 to a very excited and deserving governance market. At that time, the impact governance teams had on their respective organisations was often overlooked (although that changed greatly during the pandemic) and DMJ wanted to use the HOT 100 as a spotlight to shine across the industry and the individuals who make it so valuable. We were pleased to see such an amazing response and such a celebration of governance across the profession.

Working with the awards’ long-time and sole sponsors, Computershare, we initially spilt the awards into 10 categories that we believed defined the role of a Company Secretarial and Governance professional. These categories included Board Influencers, Deal Makers, Future Leaders, Governance Trailblazers, Innovators, Relationship Managers, Rising Stars, Social Impact, Team Leaders, and Technical Experts. A Judging Panel was created whose role it was to evaluate and discuss all the nominations. Votes were tallied, and we released the first 100 winners of the HOT 100 to an eager governance market. For a week after announcing the winners, LinkedIn feeds were dominated by updates and posts from our winners and their employers.

Following the success of the previous year, we wanted to ensure the awards remained relevant, especially in relation to ESG. ESG has gained significant importance over recent years, particularly within UK businesses due to the increased pressure from stakeholders and investors pushing companies to act for the betterment of the community rather than focusing on exclusively profits. There has also been a real increase in oversight from the regulators to ensure that companies are putting ESG high up on their agendas when it comes to strategic planning and growth. It felt right therefore for the Social Impact category to be changed to ESG Progress Leader and we haven’t looked back.

As the company secretarial role continues to evolve, so too does the HOT 100. The CoSec recruitment team here at DMJ is constantly searching for ways to ensure that our awards feature continues to be relevant to the governance market and a mainstay of the industry.

For our most recent awards, we felt it important to highlight the importance of a key individual within the governance and company secretarial space that has, throughout their career, educated, highlighted and championed the importance of governance whilst consistently providing first-class governance support to the businesses and individuals with whom they’ve worked. Thus, the DMJ Governance HOT 100 Lifetime Achievement Award was born. We were thrilled to announce Rosemary Martin as the inaugural winner of this important distinction.

Another addition this year has been the introduction of the Category Award Winner. This has been awarded to one individual in each category that the judges felt best encapsulated the spirit of the category. We are excited to hand out a special award to these individuals at our upcoming winner's party.

Now as we move towards the halfway point in the year, we will again start casting our eyes to next year’s HOT 100, striving to make 2024 our best yet. As always, we will ensure the awards continue to highlight the key themes within the industry and wider market.

We would welcome any suggestions as to how we can further enhance our HOT 100 initiative and celebrate success in this wonderful profession.