This year we entered into a new venture with our events app, which has been marked a huge success with take -up being 61% against an average of 48% for first time app users with unique hits over the 2 days reaching 19.2k! With 63.46% of you rating the use of the app as excellent or very good. – “Really loving the new app – it’s bossy and fun!”

The app doesn’t end with conference, so please keep hold of it as we will be using it to promote our latest blog posts and keep you informed with up coming event information. It will also be used during the Northern Forum in October so stay tuned!

We have received such positive feedback when it comes to Conference this year Excellent and Fantastic are just a few words quoted with 63.79% of you rating #PPMAHR18 as excellent or very good and it really means a lot to us that our members and colleagues get the most out of the event and find it valuable and enjoyable…

“Fantastic event thoroughly enjoyed it! The pre-conference event worked really well as allowed introductions to be done on an informal basis which paved the way for the rest of conference”

“This was my first event and I’ve really enjoyed it and found everyone so welcoming. T have found some of the speakers really engaging and inspiring and I feel more motivated to move forward with my career.”

We look forward to taking on board your comments of improvement including experimenting with session formats and including more information about the shortlisted award entries in the lead up to the gala dinner awards evening to ensure next year’s conference is even better and really hope we see you all there.

You can find the full pack of the survey results here.

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

We are delighted to be recruiting for a full time PPMA Business Admin and Marketing Support Officer. The post is critical to our ongoing development and is being offered as a 2 year fixed term contract.  If you are interested in helping PPMA further progress our critical work and could see yourself in this role, check out our information pack.

To help you get a better idea of what’s involved, Caroline and Karen share with us some of their views.

Firstly Caroline says “This role is a real commitment made on behalf of PPMA Policy Board. It’s a different role to our current arrangements, combining a number of activities around marketing, membership, sponsorship support and general office administration. We’ve been consistently building on what our predecessors have been doing but there is now more than enough demand for what we offer, to support a full time post. PPMA is a fantastic national community of passionate HR & OD colleagues and a great organisation to be part of”.

Karen told us “I very much support what Caroline says. This role will be at the heart of supporting the Principal Officer group and will also provide a degree of stability during the annual changeover in Principal Officers. I think it is a really good opportunity for someone who has passion for the vision of PPMA and the confidence to also make suggestions and improvements as we develop the role. ‘Support’ roles can often be seen as routine or boring, but the reality is that most organisations (and leaders!) would fall to pieces without fantastic support”

If you are interested in applying for this role, the deadline for responses is 5 pm Wednesday 25^th October.  Please see the information pack for additional details.

Applications must be emailed to: president@ppma.org.uk and vicepresident@ppma.org.uk.