Dear PPMA colleagues and friends,

You will remember from Caroline Nugent’s term as our President last year, how passionate she was about Women in Leadership and likewise the amazing President of SOLACE, Jo Miller has made Women in Leadership a key platform for her term. So this year, to further confirm our commitment to our partnership with The Guardian, we have decided to become a Sponsor of the Women In series. Caroline and I attended the launch of the series last year on behalf of PPMA and it’s really great to see how our involvement has developed since then.

What you’ll see as part of our sponsorship is the PPMA brand prominent in all the Women In content – online and printed. We will also have editorial content and targeted adverts across www.theguardian.com. I’m so thrilled with this as it further reinforces the work we have been doing on our own branding, whilst at the same time supporting the topic.

I was delighted to introduce a Women In event last Thursday in London. We had some incredible women working in healthcare come and join us from across the country. They were incredible as was the panel. The panel comprised:

• Chair: Alexandra Topping, Guardian news reporter
• Samantha Jones, former director of the new care models programme, NHS England. She now works independently supporting people to improve health and care services
• Dido Harding, Baroness Harding of Winscombe, chair, NHS Improvement
• Juliet Bauer, chief digital officer, NHS England
• Dr Aruna Stannard, specialty doctor in emergency medicine with an interest in frailty and geriatric emergency medicine
• Cecilia Anim, president, Royal College of Nursing

The panel question was: How can we make healthcare a better place for women to work?  And the discussion was fantastic. It was humbling, inspiring and supportive. Plenty of ideas were shared but I’m reflecting on the fact that many of the issues talked about are those that we as HR & OD professionals have been grappling with for a long time – much too long in fact. At the end the panel members spent some time in speed mentoring events with participants. For those of you who followed my live tweeting you will know that the event as measured in decibels – was a huge success.

Some of the questions have made me reflect again on something that has been on my mind since I attended the Green Park/MJ Summit on Diversity in mid-June. For those of you who aren’t aware, Green Park produce an annual Public Service Leadership 5,000 report looking at gender and ethnocultural diversity at top leadership roles in Local Government, Civil Service, UK Government fully or partly owned organisations, Healthcare and Russell Group Universities and Educational Regulator sectors.

The results obviously represent a subset of the protected characteristics set out in the Equalities Act 2010 – nevertheless it is a rigorous analysis of data that is available across those sectors. Over time, I hope we will see a much more comprehensive dataset and one that includes an analysis of talent pipelines.

Wherever you are on social media you can see that the volume around diversity is dialled up significantly – that is all to the good. BUT, we seem to be stalling on the progress that has been made in the last 10 years. I think there may be a number of reasons for this and it was a discussion that I had with a fantastic Doctor last Thursday that made me think yet again about our overall approach to diversity.

She had asked me why there were no men in the room.  This was both an obvious but an important question – especially as I had made the case in my introduction that Women In leaderhship isn’t just an issue for Women, it is clearly one for men.

The desire to create mutually supportive networks for groups who are underrepresented is, I think, a perfectly natural response to feelings of being ‘different’ and ‘being treated differently’.  Women supporting women is as understandable as men supporting men, LGBTQ supporting LGBTQ and so on.

I think these groups retain huge value. But in an of themselves, I increasingly feel they are isolating and that we need to put more focus and energy on ‘inclusion’. There are a few reasons for this:

• Diversity as a term is now confused with other meanings, over and above the protected characteristics. Rightly so, we increasingly talk about diversity in the context of social mobility, cognitive diversity, multigenerational workforces etc.
• We are potentially conflating the purpose of EqA with targets. The point about EqA legislation was to level the playing field so that the best people could flourish and not be artificially constrained.
• We don’t yet have a sufficient body of evidence that tells us what interventions works best and why. We do though have a body of private sector evidence that demonstrates that diversity at Board level sees an organisation doing much better financially than those organisations who aren’t.
• We are living in political times where diversity is an increasingly politically charged issue and in my experience that is not helpful at all.
• Whislt mutually supportive networks are helpful – I saw that with my own eyes last week – the reality is that everyone needs to be invested in the issue.
• Under the banner of inclusion, it is perhaps easier to see diversity as an issue of representation of our communities. That seems to be more helpful, but it needs more thought and evidence.
• We also have to reflect on the fact that this will take time. I was especially struck by the recent storm of protests around the appointment of the latest Board member of the Bank of England.  The initial howls of outrage that a man was appointed from a shortlist of 5, 4 of whom were women, completely overlooked the fact that of the 3 interview panel members, 2 where women.

I hope we can have more conversations about this and it may be that we devote our next PPMA quarterly supplement to the issue.

I’d be very keen to hear whether you are interested in that idea.  So please get in touch with me via social media or president@ppma.org.uk.  If you are using my email please copy Grace in on admin@ppma.org.uk.

Best

Hello PPMA members and friends

Caroline Nugent writes her last blog post in her capacity as PPMA President and she shares with us the highlights from her brilliant year in office.

“My reflections

Well what a year! I cannot believe how fast this year has gone but I’m happy to leave the presidency in the capable hands of Karen Grave who will take over the reigns at the PPMA conference this month.

Well what do I think we have achieved this year? For a start there has been significant work going on behind the scenes to ensure the future sustainability of the PPMA with the world of Heads of HR, in the public sector in particular changing. More and more of us are working across more than one employer and although it’s great for our development and the development of our teams, it has meant that we needed to ensure a wider public services approach to the PPMA. With each shared service is one less Head of HR.  I am thrilled that we have increased civil service membership, including the Chief People Office for the whole of the Civil Service,  Rupert McNeil.  This has shown how we can engage and our reach is far wider.

We also have a number of Chief Executives as members and this shows how we have moved from a ‘Personnel’ approach to a full on Leadership, OD  and Workforce strategic approach. If your Chief Executive is not a PPMA member, ask why not!  It is vital we are given the space to look outside of our organisations in order to bring back the sharing and best practice that is out there.

I have been amazed whilst I have attended lots of events at how many people have said they struggled to be given the time to attend. Why aren’t they forward thinking like one of my chief executives who has made it mandatory for all senior leaders from whatever background, be it legal to planning to bereavement services, to attend external events and wherever possible to speak at them? It is all this learning which will move an organisation from good to great!

Our marketing and sponsorship arrangements have done us proud this year with an increase in the breadth of our sponsors which will enable our members to hear and learn from many great operators in their fields. This proves that we have a lot to offer sponsors and they in return have great knowledge and products we can utilise.

A peek behind the scenes again – we have been actively working with colleagues in CIPD, HPMA and UHR for the long term benefits of all of our respective members and during the next year you will start to see how you will have a greater interaction and opportunities which we have not had before.  Look out for that news!

We have recruited Grace who has proven to be a great admin and marketing resource for the organisation. Leatham and I interviewed Grace by Skype, as we wanted someone who is capable of working remotely who could actively engage with members and sponsors – she is certainly supporting us on a daily basis. As you know as Policy Board members, we are volunteers so having a solid back office is critical for us!

Also watch out for more from Leatham who has joined us as a time limited resource as Executive Director.  Many of you will know from the SOCPO days (and many of us are old enough to remember!) we used to have a resource and this year we have decided we are moving at such pace we need some extra oomph to help and Leatham is certainly that person! HPMA and UHR have this role as a standard part of their organisations and Karen and Leatham and Policy Board will be looking at how we make this happen for PPMA this year.

So finally, with apprenticeships, women in leadership and increased membership as my priorities for my term I am pleased to say that I have moved them all forward for those coming along after me to continue. I have loved being your El Presidente (as so many of you have called me) and I look forward to supporting the PPMA for years to come.”

Hello PPMA members and friends

As many of you will know one of my key themes was women in leadership and how we can improve both the numbers of women in senior positions and working support to us all.  There have been some very interesting debates over the months on this subject, especially around the Women in Leadership group with colleagues in Solace and the Guardian ‘WomenIn’ group.

Recently the last day arrived for companies to declare their Gender Pay Gap.  And what a journey that has been! Just when you think you cant see any worse ones, others appear and the constant theme as though it is some kind of excuse used far too many times, is that its ok as there is no equal pay issues, its just that men work in higher graded roles! And therein lies the problem. Just why do we have so many more men pilots in 2018 and so few women?  For Ryanair to have such a huge pay gap of 72% and only 8 (yes I thought that was a spelling mistake too!) women pilots something fundamentally has to change. I was watching a series about Easyjet just this last week and their new shiny pilot training programme and how many women did I spot – 1 yes 1! Now it might just have been a coincidence that all the other women are on another cohort but didn’t want to be filmed (oh look a flying pig) but really this is so unacceptable.  Im 100% sure that there are women out there who would love to be pilots.  We have to fundamentally look at how we are going to support women and how future generations of boys and girls that all work is available to anyone.

We are better in the public sector (but have still reported 9 out of 10 pay men more than women although not as wide a gap – something positive!!) but there are still huge gaps in women in senior positions, and lets face it all protected characteristics are under represented (as well as social mobility which I think will have to become more widely recognised) so we must use this catalyst to bring about change and real change.  We cannot watch a film made in 2050 showing this is what happened in 2020 and look we still have a  problem.  We have had the Suffragettes and Dagenham Ladies – what are we going to need to bring about true fairness and equity. On current figures, more than 78 per cent of the companies that have reported, pay their male employees more than women, while only 14 per cent have a pay gap in favour of women.  What we need is 50/50 and then lets move on to other issues

I have seen so many insipirational senior women really supporting and mentoring the next generations and there is one easy solution.  How many of you mentor?  And if not why not?  We are the profession who should be doing this and if you can look yourself in the mirror and know you are doing your bit to help others then well done.  It is a free way to pass on all your lovely experience and is challenging when you have bright energetic people who will make you also learn and listen.  I find the experience so worthwhile and having a daughter as many of you know, I want her to learn from others this way.

So as I leave my hat to Karen later this month at the Conference, please continue to work hard on doing your bit to change the way we work so we do become a better place.  Public Services should be leading the way.  I’m at the front – where are you on the journey?

Dear PPMA colleagues and friends, on the 7th working day before #PPMAHR18 we wanted to take some time to reflect on Caroline’s year as President.

Incoming President Karen Grave says that “A two minute conversation with Caroline is all you need to get an idea of how passionately she feels about working in public service.“

An extra minute also gives you a sense of her commitment and passion for learning and building great teams.

By the fifth minute of conversation you couldn’t be clearer about her drive and desire to look forward.

This year we have seen that drive, commitment and passion for Public Service HR in action. Her own experience as an apprentice when she first joined public sector has given her a particular passion for our Apprentice of the Year programme. She’s done such a lot to ensure that her voice has been heard around the governments Apprentice Levy programme. This years Apprentice of the Year programme has been particularly good and so good in fact that we’ve had 2 winners!

As we all know, PPMA Principal Officer roles are voluntary. So essentially it’s a day job on top of a day job. We do these roles because we love PPMA; and Caroline has certainly shown that in spades.

She’s tirelessly contributed to articles, raising the PPMA profile with key stakeholders where she could – plus she’s travelled the country to meet other colleagues – PPMA members and non-members alike – to advocate for our wonderful organisation. During her term we have also completely reviewed our marketing, sponsorship and membership approaches.

You can’t do these roles without the support of your family. Kevin, James and Sarah have been an incredible support to her this year and I know she would want PPMA to acknowledge their contribution to her successful year.

As her term comes to an end, she is embarking on the next adventure in her career. OneSource’s loss is the Financial Ombudsman Service’s gain. Caroline is their new HRD and will be starting her new role in June – once she’s had a very well earned holiday.

I’m sure you will join me in thanking her for her contribution and wish her well for the future!”

Hello PPMA members and friends

As part of our ‘Let’s Talk’ themes, our President Caroline Nugent gives us an update on how apprenticeships and the levy have developed over the past year.

“Well what a year it has been. From the ‘excitement’ of the new levy to the reality of the new levy! You are all very well versed on my views on apprentices and how passionate I am about bringing on tomorrow’s talent so they do not have huge debts. We have had an olive branch of some change through the chancellors recent speech, so hopefully those in power have realised that we all want this to work but it will not be successful in its current state.

We need to increase apprentice numbers again as to see a 50% reduction in numbers of apprentices is just the worst thing, which could have happened! I suppose I have to get my frustrations out of the way before I reflect on the positives. Why has it given providers the opportunity to raise fees for providing the same things! How can a course last year have gone up so much? And hasn’t this happened for our own HR professional courses too? We are heading the same way as universities where we have a race to the top to see who is going to charge the most and who is going to challenge why fees have gone up so much!

And why on earth weren’t the qualifications ready for some of those courses we desperately wanted to put people into as part of succession planning? What I find so depressing is during talking to so many people that I am hearing ‘oh we just put x onto a management course to make sure we use up the money!’ Where is the strategic planning approach we really need? And who is keeping track on the equalities on who is getting the training and who isn’t. I can just see now the FOIs etc asking which protected characteristic had opportunities and who didn’t…….. we don’t want another BBC.

So onto the positives as I always do. We have our highly successful national programme on Apprentice of the Year, which is due to run again this month and will test and challenge our young people and put them outside of their comfort zones. If I had had the opportunity to go on a programme like this, which is FREE and will set me up for life, I would have been so motivated and grateful to my employer. Let’s increase numbers even further next year to give more people the chance.

We have wonderful people like Matthew from Central Bedfordshire who won our Apprentice of the Year 2017 and has been working with Leatham on considering disabilities in apprenticeships and how we can make this work so that we can actively support and increase numbers of people with disabilities in the workforce. There is a real opportunity here.

Finally all in all I see a positive potential to apprenticeships, but this is conditional upon being able to use some of the money for salaries and challenging providers about why costs are increasing. From one ex apprentice to the next lets make it work and lets work together to give young people the chance to work cross sector or across different public bodies during the apprenticeship so they get a fantastic experience and no university debt!”

Dear PPMA friends and colleagues.

Our Annual Excellence in People Management Awards 2018 judging process was held at The Guardian offices in London on Wednesday 31^st January and in this post, our Vice President Karen Grave gives us an update on the day.

“The judging was a great success and as ever, The Guardian, continue to support our efforts in ensuring that the process is independent and transparent. In 2017 we changed the judging process to involve of a broad range of senior judges, which gave it an additional credibility that continues to resonate this year.

I’m delighted that many of this year’s judges are returners.  In speaking to several them, including Danny Mortimer, Chief Executive of NHS Employers and Julia Scott, Chief Executive of the Royal College of Occupational Therapists, it’s clear that they found the experience valuable.  I was particularly struck by a conversation with Helen Scott, Executive Director of Universities HR, who told me that she found the experience of judging very humbling.

The involvement of senior executives, all leading lights in their fields, is totally inspiring – it reinforces our view that submitting an entry is a fantastic opportunity to have your worked reviewed by highly respected and talented leaders. It gives PPMA confidence that Chief Executives across Public Service organisations truly understand how HR & OD teams can improve overall organisation performance.  We know that many them have gone back to their own organisations to share ideas about what they have seen in our entrants with their teams.  For our entrants, that’s an amazing compliment.

This year’s crop of entrants has been the broadest for a while.  We’ve had submissions from a range of Local and Central Government, Health and Blue Light organisations!  All of the judges commented on this. This is a testament to the efforts that Caroline and PPMA Policy Board members have made in raising our profile nationally. It bodes well for future years.

Our next milestone is Wednesday 21^st February when we will be announcing our shortlist for each of our 14 categories.  I cannot wait.

We’ll be updating our website on that day with all of our shortlist and like last year, we will also have a highlights video posted a few days later.  Don’t forget that we will be announcing our amazing winners at our Annual Gala Dinner at the PPMA Conference in Newcastle Gateshead on April 19^th.  In the run up to the dinner we will be spotlighting each of the awards categories and the shortlisted entrants.”

Karen Grave, PPMA Vice-President

Dear PPMA colleagues and friends.

It’s a belated New Year from me and all of us at PPMA.  We’ve all been incredibly busy here in January already and it sadly feels like Christmas and the New Year was an awfully long time ago.  I hope you had a wonderful time with family and friends.  My husband Kevin and I spent a few days over the holidays in beautiful Gloucester.  It was a wonderful opportunity to relax and reflect on what we have been doing since last April.

Time passes so quickly, but I feel very strongly that we have made some real progress with our Agenda and I’m looking forward to the rest of my term.  Since you last heard from me, I have visited colleagues in Northern Ireland, Scotland (our SPDS colleagues) and down in the South West, where our Regional Chair Julie Biggs and her colleagues put on a fantastic event focused on Wellbeing.

I also had the opportunity to talk at the HPMA conference in Leeds in November.  We’ve made some really positive and sustainable progress in building our relationships with other groups this year and it’s a constant inspiration to me to see the passion, commitment and energy of like-minded professionals up close.  I increasingly worry about our ability to keep abreast of change so it’s always refreshing to be with highly committed colleagues.

There is a key area though where I’m not sure that we are keeping up.  And that is the critical issue of our own professional development.  We heard from one of our Sponsors, Osborne Thomas at our October Northern Forum about research they had done with the LGA.  This showed that HR and OD professionals just aren’t focusing on their own development.  No I know we are busy BUT it’s critical we keep up with our own CPD.

I’m really pleased to say that Rising Stars and Apprentice of the Year 2018 programmes are underway.  Leatham Green is leading on this and I know he’s excited about entrants so far, but it’s critical we all continue to push these very important programmes.  Given the research I just mentioned, we can’t be satisfied until we have an overwhelming response to these programmes.

Turning my eye to this next few months, we’re obviously focusing on this years awards and of course Annual Conference in April.  Karen will be updating you more on this over the next few weeks, but don’t forget conference booking has been open for several months.  We’ve been using our social media channels heavily.

Talk of social media, this is one area that our new PPMA Business Admin and Marketing Support Officer will be working with us and TenHorizon on.  We failed to find a snappy title for our new full time role, but we absolutely succeeded in finding the right person for the role.  My final note for this blog is to introduce you to Grace Davies.  Grace has been with us since the beginning of January and she has already made herself a critical part of our team.  Grace has put together a short film below – go and make a cuppa and then listen to what she has to say.

Until next time and with very best wishes

Dear PPMA colleagues and friends

I can’t quite believe that next Monday we will be celebrating Christmas with our friends and families.  There seems to be so much to do still and not enough time to do it in! It doesn’t seem that long ago since I was finding time on holiday to write my update for the Autumn PPMA Quarterly supplement.  PPMA has made further great progress since then – I’ve been to Leeds for the highly successful Northern HR Forum, spoken at both the Northern Ireland and South West Region conferences, travelled to Scotland for the SPDS conference and Leeds to speak at the HPMA conference.  Karen has also spoken at the Public Sector Show in Manchester and we’re pleased to say that we will be supporting London and Manchester Public Services shows in 2018 too.

We’ve also had more publicity – we’ve had articles in the MJ on the very important issue of sexual harassment; in Personnel Today on Shared Services, in People Management and we will be working much more next year on raising our media profile even further.  I’m confident it is bearing fruit.  The website has been further developed – you’ll see that we now have online booking for our 2018 conference, using Eventbrite.  We’ll increasingly be looking at using Eventbrite for regional events as well.  Our online membership functionality will also be available soon.

We’re also excited about our ongoing work with CIPD, HPMA, Civil Service and UHR.  We’re looking at how we can find ways to work together on the ground, ranging from involvement in our research programme and also opening up our regional networks.  On our research programme, we’ve had a really good response to our Multigenerational Workforce research with Jobsgopublic and we’ll be looking at what the next stage of work looks like early in January.  On the back of that work, we did a joint response to a consultation that was published by the Work and Pensions committee and I’m really pleased that our response was published.

I’m mindful that we have also had some changes within the PPMA team.  Karen Dorn, who was our part time administrator has left us.  We shall miss Karen’s contributions and wish her very well for the future.  That means we are welcoming a new, full-time member of the PPMA family.  Grace Davies is joining us in January as our new Business Administration and Marketing Support officer.  It’s a mouthful of a title but Grace will be supporting us across a range of activities.  We are looking forward to introducing her a little more in January, as this will be a critical role in supporting the organisation moving forward.  We are also saying a very fond and sad farewell to Stuart Elrick.  Many of you will have known Stuart for a very long time – he has been a generous and long standing Volunteer in our community.  Please check back for next weeks blog when we will be sharing some of our memories of his history with us.

A number of you have been asking us about what we plan to do next year about our next VP.  We know it’s always important to set out our future plans – but it’s also important that we make the best decisions in the interests of the organisation moving forward.  The additional momentum and work we are now handling means we need to find a balance between considering our options fully and making as timely a decision as we can.  We have a number of really fantastic candidates for VP so I’m very confident about our future.  Policy Board will be considering a paper in the New Year and I look forward to sharing the outcome of our discussions with you in due course.

As I come to the end of 8 months in my term, I’m beyond thrilled with the progress we are making.  But as we get to Christmas my thoughts inevitably turn to what really matters most in our lives.  I am even more grateful for the love and support of my family this year.  I am incredibly lucky – I love my day job and the work I do for PPMA, but I owe my family enormous thanks for supporting me through this – they are also contributing to PPMA!  Life is very very short and across the country and world in 2017 we have seen real tragedy, but I have also been inspired by the selfless and heart-warming response of people to tough events.  So, this Christmas and New Year I hope you all have time to stand back, reflect on the contributions you have made to your work, but also to spend time with your own friends and families and cherish them.

So until the New Year from my family to yours, I wish you a very happy Christmas and a healthy and happy New Year.

Hello PPMA colleagues and friends

You’ll remember that we were really looking forward to our Northern HR Summit at the end of October. Well its been a fortnight since over 100 HR and OD colleagues – some PPMA members, some non-members (at least yet!), sponsors and speakers got together to reflect on some of the key challenges facing our organisations.

Our Vice President, Karen Grave spoke at the session on 21^st Century Public Servant and she was delighted by the absolutely fantastic welcome from our colleagues in the North and particularly our PPMA members at Leeds City Council. It was very clear that Lorraine Hallam, Chief Officer – People at Leeds City Council and her incredible team put a huge amount of work in bringing the Northern HR Briefing back to the region. The event was slightly different from our typical regional event and we were determined that we opened this out to colleagues in Blue Light, Health, Universities and even the Private Sector. We wanted to make this a really interactive event and that was very much in the spirit of our key themes around collaboration.

A number of PPMA Policy Board members attended. Our President Caroline Nugent was there, as was Steve Davies, our Honorary Treasurer, Joanne Hyde, our PPMA North West Chair, Justine Brooksbank our former Yorkshire and Humber Chair and Sam Anthony our East of England Chair.

Steve and his fellow board colleagues attended as delegates, which was a slightly different format for us. He and the board agreed that Perry Timms proved an excellent, vibrant and energetic host during both days of the forum. On Monday afternoon, Councillors James Lewis and Alison Lowe from Leeds City Council opened the event outlining the challenges that councils face and emphasising the need to be more commercial in our thinking and to collaborate and work together with partner organisations to continue delivering  services to our communities. Their contribution as elected representatives was really fantastic and demonstrated to our HR & OD colleagues that their role in transforming services is absolutely critical.

Tom Riordan, Leeds City chief executive also spoke to us. He spoke about the impressive work Leeds has been doing with partner organisations to reduce the number of homeless in the City. They have no homeless in hotels or B&B accommodation and the focus on outcomes which has delivered real change to people’s lives. They use the same strong collaborative partner based approach with the focus on outcomes to reduce the number of children in care to the lowest proportionate ratios in the country. The emphasis is on individual need as opposed to systems based on thresholds. In a similar vein they also consider the worst domestic violence cases each week with 10 key partner organisations, again with outcomes being the key driver. All this great improvement in outcomes for people in difficult situations would not be possible without the strong collaborative partnership approach – giving people the opportunity to hear about work going on elsewhere is so important in sharing best practice across public service.

Perry Timms and Nicole Ferguson from Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh NHS Foundation Trust opened day 2, by providing an energetic and informative session about the importance of collaborative working and how an appreciation of social and group dynamics can improve collaborative working and outputs/outcomes among partner organisations who need to work effectively together to provide services to our communities.

Lorraine Hallam, observed that the structure of the event, which was split over Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning, allowed us great flexibility in breakout sessions. Our delegates got to hear from existing PPMA sponsors and as mentioned above, Perry Timms, Nicole Ferguson, plus colleagues from Collaborate Out Loud. We were able to combine existing PPMA strategic themes with really practical and focused work on Collaboration techniques using Crowds, Squads and Pairs.

We know that events like Northern HR Summit give us all the space to explore key issues and take a huge amount of learning back to our organisations.

Take a look at the highlights from the 2 days in our video:

In summing up the Northern HR Summit, our President Caroline Nugent said how absolutely thrilled she and the board members are with the success of this event. We are all so pleased that delegates got the opportunity to really learn and experience the concepts of Crowds, Squads and Pairs and think about marrying the best of those, with key PPMA themes around Health and Social Care Integration, Future Workforce and Digital to think through how we can best integrate the design and delivery of a broad range of services across our Northern Communities.

Finally Karen explained that coming to Leeds was a very deliberate part of our strategy to make the PPMA presence felt nationally. She also told us of the commitment to doing a run up event to our National Conference 2018, which is being held in Newcastle-Gateshead on Thursday 19^th and Friday 20^th April. Based on this event, we are increasingly excited about 2018 and we have agreed that we will support an annual Northern HR Briefing – we look forward to seeing you at both events!

Dear PPMA colleagues and friends.

Incredibly we held our PPMA Excellence in People Management Awards 2018 last Friday!  After a very successful 2017 Awards process, we wanted to capitalise on the momentum that had created.

We met again at The Guardian with 2017 Award Winners, Sponsors, PPMA Board members, PPMA members and returning judges to take a look at what happened to our 2017 Award winners and look forward to 2018.  As you would expect, we are really excited to be starting this again and we’ll have a short video coming up at the end of this week.

In the meantime, there are a few things to share:

• We have 14 categories this year, an increase of one on 2017 – we have added a new award for the ‘Best Creative Campaign’
• We’ve aligned our Peer of the Year award cycle with our main Awards, although we judge this category differently as is it as integral part of our Penna: PPMA HRD Talent Programme
• We are asking entrants for 2 categories – the President’s Award for Special Contribution and Public Sector HRD of the Year award to be sponsored by a PPMA Policy Board member.  You can email vicepresident@ppma.org.uk for more information
• Finally, we are introducing a £25 (plus VAT) charge for each entry in any category.

Our President, Caroline Nugent told us at the launch event that she had made a huge effort to ensure that our 2017 Winners were involved in supporting PPMA events since they won their awards.  She also said that it’s really important for our Award Winners to have an opportunity to contribute to PPMA after they have won awards. The opportunity to share why they won their awards is a great way to share great practice with colleagues and she hopes it will act as an incentive for other people to submit their work.

Karen Grave our VP, also strongly believes that it’s really important to share as much best practice as we can. There is some absolutely amazing HR & OD work going on across Public Service and the PPMA awards offer a great range of categories and one way to raise our profile as a profession, is to make sure that as many people as possible know about the work we do.

Once again, the Awards process is being hosted by The Guardian. PPMA is very grateful for the support of Stacey-Rebekka Karlsson and all her team.  And of course, we could not do this without our Award sponsors, judges and our entrants.  We’re looking forward to another great year.

You can find out all the information you need on our awards page.  Make sure you are familiar with the Awards timelines – the awards close on Friday 5^th January 2018.  So, get cracking, we can’t wait to receive your entries.