Wouldn’t it be great if you could tap into the minds of your twentysomething consumers at any given moment and make sure your business is Gen Z–approved? One company has figured out a way to do exactly that.
The journey began with a moment of self-reflection. As it was encouraging global leaders to embrace young voices—over 40% of the world’s population is under 25, but only 2.6% of parliamentarians globally are under 30—it dawned on one of the world’s largest B Corp companies, the Body Shop, that it wasn’t walking its own talk.
“We had the realization that, if we’re lacking the voices of young people [on our board], how can we really honestly say, we’re building a business that we can pass down to the next generation—which is, of course, what we plan to do,” Chris Davis, board member and international director of sustainability and activism at the Body Shop, told Fortune.
The Body Shop is not alone: According to PwC, Gen Z and millennials currently make up around 38% of the global workforce, but the average age of those on FTSE 150 boards is nearly 60.
So the British multinational beauty retailer addressed this gap by creating a secondary board—or as the brand calls it, a youth collective—to advise its leadership team. But on this one, no over-30s are allowed to join.
The first attempt was a flop
In 2021, the Body Shop gathered a group of Gen Zers who are passionate about the climate to critique the company and provide insight into how to be a force for good at the United Nations’ COP26—what could go wrong?
“The activists that were working with us were pretty critical of commerce,” Davis says, adding that there’s a cohort of extremists who think that all businesses are bad from an environmental standpoint. “We live in a world of trying to balance profit and principles. It’s not so straightforward.”
Although the conversation was colorful, he quickly learned that in order for criticisms from a board comprising bright young minds to actually be constructive, they’d need to be less radical.
“It wasn’t just a question of getting young people who are interested, who are smart, who care about the world, who want to make a difference—that’s actually not enough. On top of those things, you’ve got to bring people in who are on the side of wanting business to succeed,” he says, with the caveat, “but succeed on sustainable terms.”
After that first failed attempt the Body Shop looked within the business to hire 50% of what it now calls its Youth Collective advisory board.
With a vested interest in the company’s success, Davis imagined their feedback would err on the side of constructive criticism, rather than the company just being “slammed.”
Meanwhile, for the other 50% of the board, the Body Shop recruited under-30-year-olds from external B Corp firms: “Again, we figured that these people would want a business for good to succeed, rather than trying to undermine what we were hoping to do.”
Davis says the response was fantastic—after all, it’s not often a young hire can influence top-level decision-making.
Today, the cohort of under-30-year-olds sitting on the Body Shop’s board have already helped with modernizing the brand’s social media strategy for its millions of followers; communicating the company’s inclusion program, Open Hire, which it’s rolling out globally; and more.
The golden rules
If Davis has one word of warning to anyone looking to emulate the Body Shop’s youth collective, it’s this: “Make sure that the rules of the game are clear for everybody.”
Without the proper governance you’d award a traditional board, the risk is that the group becomes more like an after-work club than a working advisory board. “And that’s not fair,” Davis says. “It doesn’t help the business owner and it’s not fair on the people who are volunteering their time to help to help us become better.”
Or worse, without setting out parameters for how often and the scope of work for which the youth collective can be used, he warns, young hires could wind up being exploited “as a kind of internally free consultant.”
That’s why, according to Davis, the Body Shop avoids drawing on their expertise unless a problem needs out-of-the-box thinking that the older leadership team can’t crack.
“It’s quite dull to say that governance is the most important thing when you’re trying to bring in a group of people who, in our experience, have brought life, insight, and energy,” he says. “But I think they’d been able to do that because the way that we’ve set it up has been quite a safe operating environment and one where trust is built up over time because everyone knows the rules of the game.”
One of those golden rules is that every voice counts. That’s not to say that every suggestion made by the youth collective will be taken as Holy Grail. But according to Davis, they’ll be taken as seriously as someone sitting on the traditional board.
“Do we always listen? Yes. Do we always act? No. When we don’t, we explain why. When we do, we explain why—that’s part of the deal,” he adds. “There will always be feedback and full transparency so it’s clear that everybody is heard.”
You’ll have to check your ego
Bringing under-30-year-olds into the board room isn’t a trend that employers can copy on a whim.
Crucially, it needs the full support of the entire leadership team, as they’re going to have to be willing to check their ego and listen to business cases put forward by people with significantly fewer years—or rather decades—of working experience.
That involves a mindset shift, Davis explains: “We’ve all seen a younger person speaking and an older person going, ‘What do you know?’ That’s the bureaucracy of business: You can’t say anything to me, because I’m more important than you,” he says. “So there has needed to be a shift from our leadership team to be open to challenge, and that’s not always easy.”
It all comes down to having a youth collective made up of people who, like you, truly want the business to succeed, rather than relish in the opportunity to condemn the C-suite.
Once everyone realizes that they’re united by an overarching desire to add value, Davis says, it becomes easier for leaders to take criticism on the chin—and for the youth collective to feel the psychological safety to share their genuine feedback.
“It can only work if people are curious about change, follow the rules, and check themselves,” Davis adds.
