Corporate governance experts have a message for companies in Atlantic Canada. Stock your board of directors with too many people with the same skills and backgrounds and your business could suffer.

“It’s absolutely critical that there is a diversity of talent and skills (on the board),” says Claude Francoeur, EY Canada’s Saint John office and advisory services leader. “It’s also important to have industry knowledge that would be supportive of the primary industry of the company. That goes beyond the traditional legal, financial and some of the operational and environmental knowledge that you might need to manage key risk areas.”

Indeed. Companies with too many male, Caucasian, 50-plus directors on their boards do not reflect the current makeup of Canada. Visible minorities now make up 16 per cent of the population and that number is growing, making it even more imperative businesses have directors with different perspectives and viewpoints.

Much of the focus on increasing diversity among corporate boards in Canada has centered on getting more women and ethnic minorities in the board room. There is a lot of work to be done on that front. In the Canadian Board Diversity Council’s 2013 Annual Report Card, it found of the 500 organizations it follows, women hold just 15.6 per cent of board seats. Meanwhile, visible minorities, persons with disabilities and aboriginal peoples held 3.4, 2.1 and 1.3 per cent, respectively, of those board seats.

But along with having a board that is more diverse along gender and ethnic lines, companies must focus on finding directors with skills sets that weren’t always present on boards of yore. “Because a lot of the strategies or projects that they execute are heavily focused on people, there is a trend to have more human resource and organizational change management skills on boards,” Francoeur says. “That’s one of the areas where we don’t see as much focus on many boards and that’s probably an area where some of the more progressive boards are starting to move.”