Hello PPMA Members and Friends
Our 50 Stories for 50 Years campaign continues with another article written for our special 50th Anniversary edition of the MJ Supplement and it’s from one of our Peer into the Future 2025 winners, Cheryl Graham, People Business Partner at Essex County Council. She shares her experience of the programme, as well as what she sees as the challenges, opportunities and future for the profession.
Your experience in the Peer into the Future programme – how you think that it will help to shape your leadership journey?
I am proud to be awarded “Peer of the Year” with Claudia Beaumont from Wiltshire Council and feel quite privileged to have been on the programme. It has truly been an inspiring and informative leadership programme with fantastic participants. The diversity and richness of speakers helped me to build my confidence as a leader, reflect on my own self-growth and self-preservation but also to think more broadly about my development and career aspirations.
I particularly valued the various CEOs and PPMA President’s sessions and found their career journeys inspirational. Their views on what they needed from their HR Directors were key takeaways. Angela O’Connor and Beverly Alimo-Metcalfe had a toolbox of knowledge on their subject matter which I will certainly tap into during my leadership journey.
I believe in fairness and equity, so driving an EDI culture that creates psychological safety in the workplace to enable staff to constructively challenge and innovate is an area that will permeate throughout my career.
What is important to me is to lead with authenticity, integrity and honestly but be that inclusive coach, compassionate, and collaborative leader that takes people on the journey with me and a people-centred approach to my decision-making which has a positive impact on organisational success. Life and careers are not linear or hierarchical. If we invest in ourselves or organisations invest in us, then we can bring our better/best selves to work.
What do you see as the key challenges and opportunities facing HR and people management in the public sector?
Devolution and Local Government Reorganisation (LGR), creates officer and political challenges but opportunities for greater collaboration and partnerships working which will improve the lives of residents. There are ‘unknowns’ which creates uncertainty and other challenges when communicating and engaging with the workforce, politicians, and residents on these agendas. People services will face workforce challenges when determining the full impact alongside, continued budgets challenges and upcoming Employment Right Bills changes.
Strategic workforce planning will enable organisations to highlight the future workforce challenges, potential risk, and mitigations, and recruitment and retention, inclusion, skills shortages, talent management strategies, succession planning, will increasingly become important in workforce strategies.
Councils also need re-think where they reduce HR&OD budgets to make savings because the implications of these changes are likely to result in investment into leadership and management programmes to build the capability of people managers and keep the workforce engaged.
So, what’s your vision for the next 10-20 years and where do you see the profession heading?
The aftermath of the devolution and local government reorganisation is likely to be prominent in the next 10-15 years which means that public sector organisations will still need to rely on the profession to support, embed and transform services including culture change and employer branding.
I am still ambitious for people transformation where HR professionals are more respected and have the gravitas to make a difference. That as well as enablers, we are as trusted business partners that develop and lead high performing teams; we are an agile learning function, identifying efficient and adaptable ways of working, we are exemplars of change and transformation and leading on activities that add value to the organisation and residents.
Thinking more broadly, of course, hybrid working, automation, artificial intelligence and climate change initiatives will become more prominent. My view is that organisations will evolve with the HR profession right by its side. Afterall we are human and living longer.
What advice would you give to future leaders coming into the sector?
Working in the Public sector is both challenging and rewarding. My advice to leaders, is that you will need to hone into your inner super-hero to navigate through the changing sector landscape, build your resilience, change capability, agility, and emotional intelligence to understand your workforce and how you can support them to thrive to meet your organisation strategies that will improve the lives of residents.
Cheryl Graham, People Business Partner at Essex County Council and Jnt Peer of the Year 2025.
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