During one of her hustings speeches in July for the Conservative Party leadership, Theresa May flagged significant reform of the UK’s boardrooms, and she has reiterated the aim since becoming Prime Minister. A government consultation paper on this issue is expected to be published very shortly and her speech at the Guildhall last night warmed to a similar theme.

Like many, she ascribes the unexpected vote for Brexit partly to a collapse of public trust in elites, including Big Business. One of the Prime Minister’s solutions is to have workers represented on company boards.

As you can imagine, her comments have ignited a great deal of debate in the business community. Much of it, though, is far from hostile.

As yet, further details are sketchy. Will the policy be compulsory and apply to all companies, regardless of size? Who will appoint the worker representatives — staff or the board? What if a company doesn’t comply?

May’s intervention on this issue has merit. Opinion polls consistently tell us that the ordinary consumer, or voter, distrusts the motives of large corporations and perceived high levels of executive pay. Having the voice of workers represented at boardroom level could help to rebuild trust. From personal experience, I can testify that having worker representatives on company boards can be beneficial.

For 19 years, until I stepped down in 2014, I was chairman of FirstGroup, a transport operator in the UK and the US with 110,000 employees.

FirstGroup is alone among UK Plcs in having a worker representative on its main board. Such a position has been earmarked ever since the company was founded, amid the deregulation of Aberdeen’s municipal bus services in the Eighties. The current employee director is Mick Barker, a veteran train driver from Luton.

In my 25 years on the FirstGroup board, I found having an employee director immensely useful. Without exception, they took their role seriously and always put their duty to the company first.

I can vouch that the non-executives benefited from the presence and input of the employee director. We consulted them when we wanted to find what was happening at the coalface, and the executive directors regularly bounced ideas off them. Employee directors were also beneficial for internal morale. They were great ambassadors when the board travelled to visit operations, facilitating better connections for us with the workers at the various depots.

While FirstGroup has undoubtedly benefited from having an employee director, government should not make the policy mandatory. Firms differ vastly in size and scope.

For example, at some of the UK’s largest companies the majority of staff and earnings are overseas. In these circumstances, asking a foreign-based employee to join a UK board and so undertake full plc governance duties could prove complex, while asking a UK employee to represent a global majority might seem odd.

We await the government’s precise intentions for worker representatives. If the intent is for them to have an influence on executive pay, this might be better achieved other than by membership of the remuneration committee.

For example, there might instead be an annual meeting between worker representatives and the remuneration committee, where the latter has to explain and justify its pay awards. Such meetings might prove salutary and influential for committee members.

"The failure of business to tap into the widest pool of talented people is damaging for us all." Martin Gilbert

Furthermore, any reform must not undermine the tradition of the unitary board, where each member undertakes full duties as a director of the company. Each director must add value to the overall discussion. FirstGroup has demonstrated effectively that it is possible to involve a worker representative and to maintain the unitary board structure.

Other structures risk these individuals not having a rounded view of the company and the issues it faces, risk undermining the accountability of such individuals for the decisions for which they are responsible and remove the influence of their accountability to shareholders.

Where the model of worker representation does not fit well, more can and should be done to educate and remind board directors of their responsibilities under section 172 of the Companies Act. The legislation is clear and well-written. This explicitly states that directors have a “duty to promote the success of the company” covering all stakeholders, including “the interests of the company’s employees”.

We should also remember that worker representatives are not a panacea for corporate ills, perceived or not. The often-cited continental model hasn’t stopped high-profile governance failures, such as at VW.

At a societal level, the failure of British business to tap into the widest possible pool of talented people is damaging for us all. Worker representatives on boards could be one way of improving diversity of opinion and experience. This can only aid corporate governance, which should not be optional but embedded in companies’ wider business processes.

A long-term approach, taking into account all key constituencies, including employees, and adopting high levels of good governance is a win-win for stakeholders. My fund managers at Aberdeen Asset Management are not alone in rating these attributes as a major positive investment differentiator.

Martin Gilbert is chief executive of Aberdeen Asset Management