Alexander Carter · Chief Human Resources Officer · United States

What a board with a frontline workforce could ask of me

My contribution to a board

A board overseeing a large hourly workforce usually sees it through three numbers: headcount, labour cost and an injury rate. I can help a board see the decisions behind those numbers. I have worked as a driver, a dock supervisor and a service centre manager, and then led HR at a truckload carrier, a contract warehouse operator and an LTL carrier. I know how a pace standard, a training agreement or a testing rule reaches the person it governs, and where reports to a board tend to smooth that journey over.

In committee terms, I would bring experience in four areas that a safety committee or a human capital committee oversees. The first is building pipelines for licensed and skilled hourly roles from inside the company. The second is injury prevention where productivity measures and safety meet. The third is labour relations in both non-union and newly represented settings, including a first contract. The fourth is testing programmes that combine federal requirements with company policy and state law. I have prepared material for a compensation and people committee since 2019 and reported workforce safety measures to a board safety committee since 2021.

There are limits I would state at the outset. I am not a financial expert for audit committee purposes, and my experience of executive pay design is narrower than my experience of frontline pay. I would expect to serve a year on a safety committee, or a full cycle on a compensation committee, before chairing either.

Judgement in practice

Asking a sponsor board to pay for a slower peak

In 2018 Cordavine's peak plan assumed temporary associates would reach 90% of experienced pick rates in their second week. Our injury records showed first-month temporaries being hurt at about three times the permanent rate. I took that analysis to the sponsor-appointed board and asked for a slower ramp costing about US$2.3 million in extra labour, at a time when the sponsor was preparing the company for sale and every margin point mattered. One director asked whether the injury data would survive a buyer's diligence. I said it would be found either way, and that the question was whether we had acted on it. The board approved the change at that meeting, and injuries among temporary associates fell by about a third. On a board I would expect management to bring workforce risk forward when it is inconvenient, and I would ask for the data by length of service.

Advising a family board to let a union vote proceed without delay

When Joliet employees petitioned for an election in 2023, management's initial advice was to contest the unit, which would probably have delayed the vote by months. I told the full board that delay was available but that it would not change the reasons employees had signed, and that the company's conduct during the campaign would be remembered at every other service centre whatever the result. Two directors asked whether accepting the unit would invite petitions elsewhere. I said honestly that it might. The board supported accepting the unit and holding management to written conduct rules. Employees voted for representation, and we bargained a first contract. As a director I would ask management to separate what the law permits from what the company would be willing to defend in front of its own employees.

Putting staff safety on a health center's quality agenda

At Ellisbrook Community Health Center the quality and patient safety committee reviewed clinical incidents in detail but saw nothing about verbal or physical incidents against staff. In 2022 I asked that those reports come to the committee alongside patient-safety data. The first year's figures showed that two in five incidents occurred at one clinic during evening hours, when a single receptionist covered the front desk. The committee recommended a second evening staff member and a security presence, at about US$180,000 a year, and the board approved it. Incidents at that clinic halved the following year. As a non-executive I try to ask which people a committee's reports leave out, because the gap is often where the next problem starts.

My first year on a board

Before my first meeting I would ask for two documents that rarely appear in a board pack: the company's injury and turnover data cut by length of service, and the rules a newly hired frontline employee is handed in the first week. Together they tell me more about how a company treats its workforce than an engagement summary does.

Across the first two quarters I would visit at least three operating sites without a prepared tour, ideally at the start or end of a shift, and ask supervisors which rule they would change if they could. I would meet the chief executive, the head of HR, the head of safety and the general counsel one at a time, and the committee's adviser if it has one. I would sit through one full cycle of whichever committee I joined before proposing anything, unless I found a safety or legal exposure that could not wait.

In the second half of the year I would agree with the committee chair a short list of measures the committee should see regularly, if it does not already: injuries by tenure, early turnover, reasonable-suspicion referrals and the share of frontline vacancies filled from inside the company. At twelve months I would ask the chair whether my operating background had helped the board or drawn me into management's territory, and I would act on the answer.

Conflicts and their management

Brennoway employs me, and its chief executive and general counsel would need to approve any directorship before I accepted one. I would decline seats at freight carriers, freight brokers, warehouse operators, truck and trailer dealers and staffing agencies that supply drivers or dock workers, and at any company among Brennoway's larger customers or suppliers. I would give the nominating committee a list of those relationships at the start and update it if Brennoway's customer base changed.

Two particular sources of conflict deserve naming. I sit on management's side of bargaining at Joliet, so I would not join a board where that role could be seen to influence the company's own labour relations. And I am a director of Ellisbrook Community Health Center, which receives an annual contribution from Brennoway's charitable fund; I take no part in decisions about that contribution and would disclose it.

If a matter touching Brennoway came before a board I served, I would say so before discussion began, leave the room and ask that the minutes record it. Nothing I know about Brennoway's pay, customers or employees would enter another board's deliberations. If recusals became regular, I would offer to stand down rather than hold a seat I could not fill.

My independence statement

I am a full-time executive of a private freight carrier and hold phantom units under its long-term incentive plan, but no equity in it or in any listed company I might serve. A board considering me should apply its own listing standards and governance criteria, including any trade between its company and Brennoway, and I would supply whatever it needs to do that. I would leave the conclusion about my independence to that board.

Committee contribution

Chair and member readiness
Capacity	Committees
Ready to chair	Board safety, health and environment committee of a company with a large hourly workforce, after a year as a member · Compensation and human capital committee, after one full annual cycle as a member
Ready to join	Compensation and human capital committee · Safety, health and environment committee · Nominating and governance committee

Capacity and preferences

Time available: 22 days per year
Current directorships: 1
Sectors: Industrial and building-products distribution · Waste, recycling and environmental services with large driver workforces · Utilities and field-service companies · Hospital systems and community health organisations
Company type: Listed mid-cap company or large private company with an established committee structure and several thousand hourly or licensed employees
Company stage: A company changing how its frontline work is done, through automation, network consolidation or rapid hiring, where safety, pay and labour relations need board attention together

The seat I am pursuing

I am looking for one non-executive seat at a company whose results depend on a large hourly or licensed workforce working in physical conditions: industrial or building-products distribution, waste and environmental services, utilities and field services, or a hospital system. I would be most useful on a board safety, health and environment committee or a compensation and human capital committee, in a company changing how its frontline work is done through automation, network consolidation or rapid hiring. A listed mid-cap company or a large private company with a mature committee structure would suit me best. I am not seeking a seat as a freight or labour-relations specialist consulted now and then; I want committee work that draws on what I know every quarter. Before going further I would ask the chair which workforce decisions the board has found hardest in the last two years, and how the board first learned of them.

Board and committee exposure

Served as a director

Ellisbrook Community Health Center

Board of directors; quality and patient safety committee member; finance committee member from 2024

March 2021–present

Director of a Fort Wayne community health center with seven clinics; proposed in 2022 that the quality committee receive staff-safety incidents alongside patient-safety reports.

Reported to a committee

Brennoway Freight Lines

Board compensation and people committee

September 2019–present

Prepares the committee's papers on executive and frontline pay, the driver academy, wage benchmarking and succession; attends meetings outside executive sessions.

Reported to a committee

Brennoway Freight Lines

Board safety committee

2021–present

Reports workforce safety measures with the vice president of safety, including injuries by tenure band, academy graduates' crash rates and testing results by role group.

Presented to the Board or a committee

Brennoway Freight Lines

Full board

2020–2024

Presented the academy proposal in 2020, the response to the Joliet petition in 2023 and the first-contract terms in 2024.

Presented to the Board or a committee

Cordavine Fulfilment Services

Sponsor-appointed board of directors

2017–2019

Presented the seasonal peak workforce plan, injury analysis by week of employment and the workforce plan for warehouse robotics.

Governance learning and readiness

IICA Independent Directors’ Databank: Not yet registered

India's IICA Independent Directors' Databank exists for directors of Indian companies who are, or wish to be, independent. My career and the seats I am considering are in the United States, so it does not apply to me, and I am not registered. I have no plan to seek an Indian directorship. A US board would assess my independence under its exchange's standards or, for a private company, its own governance documents.

Director-education programme on compensation committee practice for prospective public-company directors, completed in 2024
Board-level course on serious-injury and fatality prevention for directors of industrial companies, 2025
Community health center board service since 2021, including quality and finance committee work
Briefings from Brennoway's labour counsel on federal labour law and first-contract bargaining, 2023–2024