What We Do

The Public Services People Managers Association (PPMA) is the first choice association for people professionals across public services.

For more than 40 years we have been a collective voice for a highly qualified, passionate, committed and diverse public services Human Resources (HR) and Organisation Development (OD) community. We play a critical role in influencing key decision-makers and stakeholders involved in people management and workforce issues.

Why are we here?

Political, economic, financial and social challenge and change continue to make unprecedented demands on our public service workforce.  From public services policy reform, the opportunities digital offers to transform service design and deliver, the austerity agenda’s impact, and the rising expectation of customer expectations of public services, the context for HR and OD practitioners is highly complex and unique.  And demand for our contribution to our organisations is only rising.

It is a very challenging but rewarding time to be working across public services.  You can find our more about our vision and values and what we do on the rest of this page.

Our Vision

PPMA continuously strives to enhance, promote and raise the standards of people management and organisation development within public services. We provide a voice to represent the views and interests of the HR and OD community and we ensure that through membership of the Association, our community aspires, thrives and flourishes.

Our Values

We are a lively community – we encourage challenge, innovation, collaboration, continuing professional development and developing strong networks.  We have 7 core values:

  • We listen to all points of view
  • We talk to all stakeholders involved in workforce related matters
  • We activity promote the PPMA agenda – and make sure we are embedding the highest professional standards, conduct and practice
  • We provoke each other and our organisations to really think about workforce challenges
  • We influence national and local workforce agendas
  • We share best practice across our community, our sponsors and partners
  • We work hard to develop each other. Being the best we can be means our organisations can be the best they can too.

.PPMA Annual General Meeting 2022 / 2023PPMA Annual General Meeting 2022 /

What We Do

Our Priorities
The scope of any HR & OD professionals work is very broad.  The PPMA focus our efforts on a number of broad priority areas which may vary from year to year.

These cover the following themes

Champion the HR/OD Profession
We support public service through connecting with each other and broadening the knowledge and influence of the HR/OD profession within public services. We help to do this by strengthening partnerships with other public sector membership bodies – including HPMA, UHR, SOCITM, WME and CIPD to expand influence, reach, and insight across several areas.

Develop our talent
We support investment in our community through our talent development programmes.  We believe ongoing development is so important for HR & OD professionals, therefore we offer programmes for professionals at all stages in their careers. We focus on early career with our Apprentice of the Year programme and One to Watch Programme, established careers
with our HR Rising Star Programme and executive careers with our Peer into the Future.

Sustain and nourish professional networks
We run national live events and regular webinars.  Our Annual Conference and PPMA Excellence in People Management Awards are our marquee events. We run fortnightly webinars which are also available on demand.

Encourage continuous learning and knowledge exchange
We encourage networking and the sharing of information, ideas and knowledge across our community. This may be through our blogs, media communications or encouraging use of social media connections by our members and partners.