Hello PPMA friends and colleagues

Last week was #PPMAHR22 in Manchester. It was a brilliant 3 days and one of the highlights was the inauguration of our new President – Gordon McFarlane. As you will probably know Gordon is Assistant Director, Corporate Services at Leicestershire County Council and has been a PPMA member for a number of years. More recently he’s been supporting outgoing President Steve Davies as his VP. We would like to thank Steve for all of his work, especially during the difficult time of the pandemic and are delighted to say that he is remaining on our Board as Secretary. We would also like to welcome Gordon as our new President and know that we are in very safe hands for the next 2 years and into the future. Below Gordon shares with us his reflections from last week’s event.

——————————

“It feels like a good time to briefly reflect on our 2022 conference – our first in person one for 3 years! We’ve had lots of really positive feedback over the last week from those of you who were able to attend, and there was a great atmosphere and a really positive vibe for the whole conference. It very much felt like a celebration of our profession and our achievements!

I was really impressed with all of our speakers – both in terms of quality, and also the diverse range of topics that were covered. A few themes developed over the conference e.g. the role of HR/OD now and in the future, EDI, workforce pressures and challenges, hybrid working, and wellbeing.

Huge congratulations to all of our award entrants and winners across all categories – we had some fantastic submissions, with great stories to tell and real evidence of your achievements.

I’d like to add my grateful thanks to all of our sponsors, whose support and ongoing commitment is invaluable. In addition, many  generously donated raffle prizes, and we raised a brilliant total of £2,200 as a result of your generosity. This will be split equally between our two chosen charities – Parkinsons Disease Society and British Red Cross – DEC Ukrainian Humanitarian Appeal.

You can view all of the photos, speaker slides on our website  The highlights video from the whole event will be available to watch very soon.

I feel really optimistic about the future of the PPMA – your association, and whilst we’ll soon begin to plan for next year’s conference at the Birmingham Hilton Metropole Hotel on the 26th to 28th April 2023 (save the dates!), there will be lots of activity and engagement with you between now and then.

Finally, enjoy the early summer weather!”

Gordon McFarlane, PPMA President

Hello PPMA members and friends

As you will probably be aware, next week is the PPMA Annual Conference. We are really excited, as I hope, are those of you attending. Especially as this will be our first in person conference for 3 years as our last one was held in 2019.

This year we’ll be at the iconic Midland Hotel in sunny Manchester and the full conference is over 3 days, starting at lunchtime on Wednesday 27th April and closes at lunchtime on Friday 29th April. Based on past experience, this works best as it allows for convenient travel arrangements either side. And for those who aren’t able to join us for the full event, we have attendees who will be there for just 2 days, or are only attending our fantastic Gala Awards Dinner Celebration on Thursday evening.

We have a really great line up of speakers on a variety of current and highly topical HR/OD subject matters, including chief executives, HR/OD thought leaders and HR/OD leaders sharing best practice insights and Peter Cheese, Chief Exec of CIPD will be closing the conference.

There will also be plenty of opportunities to meet our wonderful PPMA sponsors and visit the wide variety of exhibition stands, so that you can better understand the contributions they can all make to your organisations.

But, the most anticipated thing about the conference is the ability, at last , to network with colleagues, friends and like minded people, to learn, have fun and also forget about the day job for a bit.

I look forward to meeting you next week, and if you haven’t got a ticket yet, it’s not too late. Contact finance@ppma.org.uk to make your booking.

Full details of the PPMA conference speakers, sessions, timings and booking details can be found at  www.ppma.org.uk/ppma-conference-2022/

Steve Davies, PPMA President

Hello PPMA members and friends

Our post this week has been written by Tom Haak, a leading global HR thought leader and a keynote speaker at our live Annual Conference in Manchester in April. Tom has extensive experience in HR Management in multinational companies and has a keen interest in innovative HR, HR tech and how organisations can benefit from trend shifts. He’s the director of the HR Trend Institute which follows, detects, and encourages trends. To set the scene ahead of his session, he asks 10 questions about the HR plans you have in mind for 2022.

_________________________________________________________________________

Recently we published our 2022 HR trend report: “10 HR trends for 2022: from adaptation to transformation”. Based on this report we formulated ten questions that can inspire you when you are considering or implementing HR projects in 2022.

1. Are your projects transformative?

Unfortunately, many HR projects are far from transformative. They are more reinforcing the current status quo than driving the organisational digital transformation. Many HR processes that are the basis for the projects are old-fashioned and based on traditional views on how organisations should work. Organisations are viewed as hierarchical, with clear boundaries and people assigned to well defined jobs. But organisations have moved on and need to transform. Are your HR (tech) projects transformative?

2. Is the scope of your HR projects broad enough?

If you look at the ecosystem of your organisation (employees, flexible workforce, clients, prospects, suppliers, universities, local community etc.) there are many organisations and individuals for whom the HR could add a lot of value. Are you scoping your projects beyond the boundaries of your organisation (the people on the payroll) and do you include other parts of the ecosystem as well?

3. Are people treated as employees or as co-creators?

The workforce is already a lot more diverse than just employees. The rise of the flexible workforce is a long-term trend. During the Covid-19 crisis employees and teams have experienced that that they can function very well without too much control. More independence and autonomy created a positive experience and it tasted like more. The concept of the traditional employee is changing, from submissive employees to independent co-creators. Is HR fuelling this transition?

4. Are you entering the metaverse?

The metaverse is quickly developing, creating experiences where the real world and the virtual world are blending, creating, and enhancing the experience of the workforce, the clients, and other stakeholders. Immerse yourself in this new world, learn with the early adapters and help to shape the metaverse.

5. Are your technologies adaptive and forgiving?

End of 2017 Trenwatching.com published their consumer trend forecast for 2018. Number four on their list: “Forgiving by design”.

I quote from their article: “Consumers are already sky high on expectations – fueled in part by their digital lives – of constant service upgrades and seamless personalization. One consequence? In 2018 they’ll expect all kinds of products and services to forgive them when their past – the product they selected, the size they chose, the service they wanted – doesn’t match their future. How? By near-magically adapt around their changing needs, wants and whims.

HR technology and other technologies in the workplace are often not very flexible and forgiving. People are forced into workflows that don’t take their preferences and capabilities into account. The opportunities are numerous.

6. Are skills the main building blocks of your approach?

Instead of looking for the full stack employee that exact fits in the job profile, organisations start looking for people with specific skills and education and experience become less important.

The current mainstream trend to look more at the required skills than job profiles and redesign the HR practices with skills as the main currency, is very promising.

Are skills the main building blocks in your approach?

7. Is your focus really on the people, not just efficiency?

Many organisations say the right words: we are people focused and our people are at the core of the digital transformation. The personal experience of people is different. It is often: organisation first, people second. The language is full of machine related metaphors. Efficiency, smooth operation, 100% user adaption etc. Are you really focusing on enriching the life of people inside and around the organisation or is it just words?

8. Do you provide solutions for life coaching?

There was a time when the view of most employers was that they had no dealing with the life of the employees outside work. With the increasing blurring of the boundaries between work and private life and the increased attention to work-life balance this is changing. Organisations are increasingly offering the people in their workforce life coaching support. With this more holistic approach they help people to cope better with the various aspects of life, at work and at home. Areas could include health, finance, sustainability and housing.

9. Is one of your focus points “learning in the flow of work”?

It makes a difference if an employee must search actively for a learning module that he or she needs, or that the module is offered at an appropriate moment in the workflow, based on real time observations of the behaviour the employee. If there is a meeting with company X in your diary, your personal learning aid might ask: “Do you want to learn more about company X?”. If you are stuck in designing a difficult Excel macro, the Excel chatbot asks you: “Can I help you to design the macro?”. If you have a meeting scheduled with an employee with a low performance rating (the computer get this information in the HRIS), you are offered a short module “how to deal with under-performing employees”.
The solutions become even better if your individual learning style and the level of your capabilities are considered. “Learning in the flow of work” is an important trend. Not easy to implement, but technology can help a lot.

10. Do you master Design Thinking and agile methodologies?

Finally: the adoption of design thinking and agile methodologies in the HR arena has been slow. Maybe this should have been question number one, as many of the questions above will be answered in a proper design thinking process.

Success in 2022, hopefully I’ve given you some food for thought.

Tom Haak, Director of the HR Trend Institute . LinkedIn: http://goo.gl/u0GnoU

If you would like to come along and hear Tom speak at #PPMAHR22  you can book your place via our website

Hello PPMA members and friends

For many of you the above statement will seem pretty obvious and yet quite broad. Whatever your role in the HR/OD profession, I can’t imagine that your focus isn’t shaped in some way by Covid 19 still.

Whether your attention is on a return to the office more regularly, hybrid working, support on wellbeing, recruitment challenges, organisational development planning, ongoing monitoring of absence or mandatory vaccinations, there’s not much HR/OD work that isn’t still impacted in some way or other by Covid19.

We know that Covid will be with us for a long time still but given the relative success of the vaccination programmes it is starting to move from pandemic (where growth and spread is exponential) to endemic levels (where the spread and growth is more predictable and manageable). Our organisations are inevitably still guided by government and public health advice and general caution in protecting the health and safety of our staff, but I’m acutely aware that as an HR/OD profession we are already promoting ways of working and doing things that are both supportive and innovative.

Through necessity, our workforces have learned to better utilise technology to undertake their roles, even those roles that might be deemed more frontline and manual in nature by having team, colleague or client meetings online. And we are using these experiences to promote new hybrid and agile ways of working for our teams and services going forward, with a focus on work approaches that better fit flexible and different ways of working to achieve outcomes and not promoting a one size fits all approach to the whole organisation.

Many of these innovations and organisational development approaches from across the country, are showcased in the entries we’ve received for our PPMA Excellence in People Management Awards 22. They will also be subjects that the speakers at our #PPMAHR22 conference in Manchester on the 27-29 April will talk about. At the Conference we’ll also be announcing and celebrating the winners of the People Management Awards.

As HR/OD professionals, we are all facing continually challenging and changing times and as such it’s never been more important for us to learn from and share best practice with each other. Our conference is the perfect opportunity for you and members of your teams to do this. So why not come along and hear some great speakers, network with like minded colleagues and exhibitors from around the country, enjoy a fabulous awards gala evening and even spend some time exploring the amazing city of Manchester. All the details you need to know are on our website – www.ppma.org.uk/ppma-conference-2022

We look forward to seeing you there!

Steve Davies

PPMA President