Last week, Financieele Dagblad (FD) published an article in which Prof. Vletter-van Dort, professor of Financial Law and Governance at Erasmus School of Law, discusses the impact of the corona crisis and in general digital working on the task of the supervisory board within a company. According to Prof. Vletter-van Dort, members of the supervisory board must get away from their screens: the digital nature of his work as a supervisory body under the current circumstances endangers the quality of supervision.
Not only must the management board provide information to the supervisory board, the board also has a duty to obtain. This obligation was fulfilled, among other things, by informal discussions with employees, which no longer or hardly ever take place under the current circumstances. The lack of this "coincidental information" makes it more difficult to test how meeting documents have been drawn up, whether they are complete and correct, what the atmosphere is within the company, whether employees are satisfied, etc.
According to Prof. Vletter-van Dort, it is therefore of great importance that supervisory directors consider how they can obtain this coincidental information. Getting out from behind the screen requires creativity from supervisors. “Although coincidence does not exist, the big challenge for supervisory directors now is to create coincidence,” says Prof. Vletter-van Dort.
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