Dear PPMA friends

Leadership at the best of times is challenging. Covid-19 has shone even more of a spotlight on those in leadership positions, wherever they sit in our organisations, our politics and society more broadly. Leadership makes or breaks an organisation and that really matters when what your organisation is about is delivering vital public services. And in these times, all public services have shown themselves to be vital.

Delivering business as usual is complex, nuanced and tough enough as it is. Leaders are easily worshipped and just as easily pulled down. But leaders are human too. Covid-19 has stretched our leadership community more than we could have ever thought possible. Responding to the scale of crisis we have seen isn’t anywhere on a leadership course curriculum.

We’ve seen leaders (and plenty of other people too) do utterly extraordinary things over this last 6 months. However, it’s often a lonely role. In this podcast Piali Das Gupta and Julie Biggs talk to Karen Wormwell about leadership in Covid times.

Piali Das Gupta               Julie Biggs

It’s a wonderful listen, I hope you enjoy it too.

Hello PPMA friends

For those of us working in Public Services HR and OD, these last months have been the most consequential, challenging and complex of our professional lives, and our personal lives too. During the conversations we have had over the last months, the Health and Wellbeing of our Workforces has either been the top of your list of priorities or very close to the top.

It’s worth reflecting that our workforces are so much more dynamic, complex and very human that the word ‘workforce’. Ensuring that we put the ‘human’ at the heart of all of our HR & OD work has never been more important.

There is some fabulous Wellbeing work going on across our organisations. But we have acknowledged that these unique set of circumstances may well need something different in response, but something that will sit alongside existing strategies.

Over the last month, with PPMA Board and other colleagues, we have been piloting the role out of CareSpace. CareSpace is a 20-minute intervention designed to enable “a space for self-care through facilitated connection and support”. CareSpace is delivered as either a Face to Face or Remote offering. We are delighted to be working with some amazing colleagues in North Bristol NHS Trust and UCL Psychology Department in this initiative.

Over the next few days you will find much more information about CareSpace and our PPMA Accredited CareSpace Facilitator training programme. This is open to both PPMA and non-PPMA members.

In the meantime, you can read more here. And you can listen to the following wonderful podcast. Karen Wormwell interviews Charlie Jones, Consultant Clinical Psychologist at North Bristol NHS Trust and Benna Waites, Joint Head of Psychology in Aneurin Bevan University Health Board about CareSpace and the broader work on Compassionate Cultures in the workplace. They are extraordinary people and I know you will find this is a fabulous learning experience. I hope in a future podcast we will be able to meet Katrina Scior, Associate Professor in Clinical Psychology at University College London (UCL) and Kim Guest who is working with us on this until September 2020.

Charlie Jones              Benna Waites

He also discusses the importance of the HR & OD community working together with other public services communities, the role of public health modelling and why it’s needed in from a workforce demand and supply perspective, how to filter out some of the constant information we’re bombarded with in order to stay resilient and protect our mental health and how council staff might be deployed to help with contact tracing.

Jim also shares some information about the Behavioural Science and Public Health Network which is a group that he chairs. It’s role is to link behavioural science to the health of the public and he believes that HR & OD professionals would benefit tremendously from becoming  member. Karen is a member of the network and she is working with Jim to talk about how we might be able to collaborate to offer specially tailored podcasts, webinars and other events for PPMA members. You can find about more about the network here and we will be sending out more information shortly.

We hope you find the podcast useful and inspiring in these difficult times.

Stay safe.

This is the first podcast in our new series and it features PPMA President Karen Grave talking about the challenges facing our HR community during this unprecedented time. She shares some of the great work that’s being done around the country, talks about working across a public service economy and the role that public services workers have in protecting the community and the NHS, the challenges of working from home and much more.

You can contact Karen with any thoughts or comments via email at president@ppma.org.uk

We hope that you find the podcast a helpful source of inspiration, practical support and advice.