Search company Veredus Executive Resourcing has launched a guide to help organisations improve the diversity of their boardrooms.

Getting Women On Board sets out to show how diversity in the boardroom can be good for business.

The guide is aimed at executives making senior-level appointments and is based on research and input from internationally renowned companies including Ford Europe, Pearson and T-Mobile.

Getting Women on Board was inspired by the Department of Trade and Industry’s Women and Equality Unit, which has urged companies to do more to appoint women and people from ethnic minorities into senior-level posts.

“The dominance of white men in Britain’s boardrooms is a reflection of the corporate ladder’s long-established bias,” claimed Joanne Welch, managing consultant at Veredus and the guide’s co-author. “We hope this guide demonstrates that improving gender diversity in the boardroom enables organisations to represent and better understand the customers they want to attract, leading to better productivity, innovation and leadership.”

Out of the top 100 FTSE firms, 31 have no women at all on their boards, while only 9.7% of UK boards have female representation.

The guide is available on Veredus’s website at www.veredus.co.uk.