Hello PPMA members and friends

Today, the 8th March 2022 is International Women’s Day and the theme for this year is #BreakTheBias. The campaign is looking to actively call out gender bias, discrimination and stereotyping whenever and wherever it’s seen. And to show solidarity, everyone is being asked to strike the IWD 2022 pose and cross your arms and share your images, videos, resources presentations or articles using #IWD2022 #BreakTheBias

To show our solidarity, joint PPMA Vice President and Assistant Director Human Resources & Organisational Development at Salford City Council Sam Betts, is sharing what International Women’s Day and the #BreakTheBias campaign means to her.

“The theme for the International Women’s Day 2022 campaign is #BreakTheBias and the words below have really resonated with me:

• Imagine a gender equal world.
• A world free of bias, stereotypes, and discrimination.
• A world that is diverse, equitable, and inclusive.
• A world where difference is valued and celebrated.
• Together we can forge women’s equality.
• Collectively we can all #BreakTheBias.

These words have prompted me to reflect both on what I can do personally and also what we collectively as HR & OD professionals can do to ensure that, at least in our sector and our workplaces, we don’t have to imagine …..  What can we all do to celebrate and support women, raise awareness about bias and take action to achieve gender equality?

As part of the PPMA community we all hold roles with the power to influence and shape practice, policy and approaches across a range of areas which can have a positive impact on women and it’s incumbent on us all to make sure that we do all that we can to create truly inclusive and welcoming workplaces that are accessible to all and where everyone is encouraged and supported to achieve their full potential.

We’ve got a unique opportunity to use the learning from the last 2-years to develop a strong flexible and hybrid working offer that opens up work and working in our sector to those who may previously have been excluded. Lets challenge ourselves to think differently about how we construct jobs and organise work – it really is about outcomes and not simply presenteeism.  Let’s not take a step backwards and try to force work back in to an outdated model – and do we really need in person meetings before 10:00 which can exclude so many people when we have digital alternatives?

Let’s use some of the challenges our sector is facing around recruitment and retention to create opportunities and encourage more women in to professions where historically they may have been excluded! With different approaches to recruitment, increased flexibility for where and when people work, job redesign and training and development there is an opportunity to encourage women who may have felt excluded either due to perception or barriers for accessing this type of work. We’ve got the flexibility to use apprenticeships to gain the qualifications – so let’s create new routes in to digital, planning, engineering and many more!

But it doesn’t stop there. Lets make it easier for women to progress within our sector by building flexibility in to our career pathways and development programmes. But most importantly lets listen to understand what it’s really like, listen to what might be getting in the way and do something about it. Let’s create a culture that continuously supports and encourages women, that builds confidence and empowers them to put themselves forward and achieve their goals and lets celebrate their achievements!

And with so many amazing women role models – too many to mention – throughout our PPMA community lets use our collective #PPMA voice and network to really #BreakTheBias“

Sam Betts

Joint PPMA Vice President and Assistant Director Human Resources & Organisational Development at Salford City Council

Why not join us in showing your solidarity and share your #BreakTheBias images and resources on this International Women’s Day.

Hello PPMA members and friends

As we move into 2022, I wanted to reflect briefly on what’s been another challenging year for us all – professionally, and for many of us, also personally.

Our profession has very much been front and centre in our organisations, and what’s been achieved in relation to the pandemic response as well as keeping the ‘business as usual’ show on the road, is a credit to you all – the dedication and commitment shown has been incredible!

After a well deserved break, we face a huge number of workforce challenges – more opportunities to excel, and for our profession to continue to make a real difference.

Although we’re living in very uncertain times, we are very much hoping that we will still be able to hold our annual conference in person in 2022, and we’d love to see as many of you as possible in Manchester. The agenda for the 3 days is shaping up really well and if you book before the 31st January you’ll get our early bird discount – find out all you need to know here.

Happy new year to you all.

Gordon McFarlane

PPMA Vice President

Hello PPMA friends

At our recent AGM, we’re delighted that five new Vice-Presidents were welcomed to the senior PPMA board. They are Samantha Betts, Assistant Director Human Resources & Organisational Development, Salford City Council, Tracy Brennand, Assistant Director of HR/OD, Tameside Council, Sonia Grewal, Director of HR & OD, Swindon Borough Council, Andy Dodman, Chief Officer Human Resources, Leeds City Council and Gordon McFarlane, Assistant Director, Corporate Services, Leicestershire County Council.

We know that they will all bring their ideas, talent, energy and commitment to making the PPMA even stronger for many years to come and we’re excited about working with them.

In the video below Gordon shares his vision and thoughts for our association.

Gordon McFarlane, Assistant Director, Corporate Services, Leicestershire County Council.

Hello PPMA Members and friends

Our Annual Conference is just around the corner and we’re delighted to share with you the latest press release all about an exciting event to be held there called Tomorrow’s Talent.

“In advance of the Public Services People Managers Association (PPMA) conference which is being held for the first time in Newcastle-Gateshead on 19th and 20th April 2018, PPMA and key partners are delighted to announce a special pre-conference employability event for local college students on Wednesday 18th April.

PPMA is the first choice association for HR & OD professionals across Public Services. A key focus for the association is the development of young talent. We recognise that, in spite of current perceptions about careers in public service, the reality is these careers have the capacity to be varied, challenging, interesting and profoundly fulfilling.  Public perceptions of what it is like to be a public servant remain very different from the reality.

PPMA has teamed with a long-standing sponsor and supporter, ManpowerGroup to bring an inspiring event to the region, that provides young people with the opportunity to participate in a range of career-focused activities. Called ‘Tomorrow’s Talent’, two half day workshops will involve talking to young people about what they want from careers; hear from employers about what they can offer; participating in interview panels and receiving interview coaching.  Employer representatives from across the region and wider public service sector, will also learn from working with and hearing from young people about their hopes as they ready themselves their employment journey

Karen Grave, PPMA Vice President 2017/18 and President Elect 2018/19 says “We should all be concerned with things don’t go well in public sector.  However in my experience, there are some incredible people working in really challenging circumstances who demonstrate the best of us.  They are creative, committed, passionate, innovative, focused and care deeply about delivering services that make our country a better place.  Young people have a profound contribution to make to public service and as incoming President I am deeply committed to doing what I can to promote and encourage their interest in a career in public service”.

Nick Heckscher, ManpowerGroup Operations Director says, “We are excited to be bringing Tomorrow’s Talent to Newcastle and Gateshead Colleges. We know how important it is for students to explore the world of work in advance of commencing their job search. We have also learned that our Tomorrow’s Talent format gives them a unique insight into both interviewing and being interviewed! We are committed to maximising the chances of young people to develop into the public-sector leaders of tomorrow and working with employers in this sector to better understand how to unleash the talent of the next generation.”

Working with colleagues at Gateshead and Newcastle Colleges, PPMA and ManpowerGroup will host a morning and afternoon session.  In total we are thrilled to be welcoming 50 students from the colleges and 20 employer representatives – some of whom are local, some of whom are travelling from across the country to be at the event and conference.

In addition to ‘Tomorrow’s Talent’, other students from the colleges will take part in project-based work designed to support the conference while maximising employment opportunities.

Nadine Hudspeth, Director Marketing & Communications at Gateshead College says “Giving our students the employment edge and a head start in the jobs market is our number one priority. We are really grateful for this brilliant opportunity from PPMA and Manpower which will give our students really valuable experience of the interview and recruitment process and will also inspire them to think about the huge range of job opportunities which exist in the public sector.”

Lisa Hoseason, Director of School – Health, Childcare, Business and Science at Newcastle College, says “Providing our learners with opportunities to work with and learn from local employers to develop their skills and knowledge is key to unlocking their potential. It helps to ensure they develop the work-ready skills required to progress into employment and raise their aspirations. We are delighted to be able to participate in this fantastic event”.

PPMA will be producing a series of blogs about this event and will be publishing them on our website www.ppma.org.uk post conference.  If you would like any additional information about the event please contact admin@ppma.org.uk in the first instance.”

In addition, Sarah France-Gorton from award winning North Yorkshire County Council shared her considerable experience in this area.  North Yorkshire have done some incredible work over the years to minimise the cost of agency resource in particular – so if you can, they are worth talking to.  You might find the following blog from Chris Grimes at Matrix interesting.  Additionally this whitepaper is also well worth a read.

Happy reading, there’s always something to learn about this topic.

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

Hello PPMA colleagues and friends.

In this blog post, Karen Grave our VP writes about the national Blooming Strong campaign which celebrates the strength of women who have survived gender based violence, or supported someone who has.

“You might have seen my article about PPMA support for the Employers Initiative on Domestic Abuse in our recent MJ Quarterly Supplement.  If not, please make sure you look out for information about this important initiative. I attend the employers networking group on behalf of PPMA and am going to be at the National Domestic Abuse conference at the end of November.

PPMA has met a number of important organisations working to both help domestic abuse victims, but also raise awareness of this terrible issue. One of the organisations that I have recently met is Standing Together  which is a London Triborough partnership. Standing Together are promoting a national Blooming Strong Campaign which is an initiative to celebrate the strength of women. Women, of course, are not the only victims of domestic abuse, but it is true to say that women experience domestic violence much more than men.

The Blooming Strong Coffee Morning is intended to be a social gathering to celebrate women, whilst raising funds and/or awareness for a selected local women’s service.  To give you an idea of what this might look like Standing Together have identified 3 main components to their activity:

1. Distribution of flowers on the street in the Tri-Borough on November 28th
2. Blooming Strong Awards for survivors and those working to end Violence Against Women Groups (VAWG) – each one nominated receives a flower and letter
3. Blooming Strong Coffee Morning fundraisers / awareness raisers

Local events can be held anytime during the 16 days of activism, from the United Nations day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, on November 25th, until December 10th. Please feel free to mix and match elements of the campaign that best suit your requirements to create your event in your locality.

The Standing Together team has shared with us a number of documents that will help you decide how you want to run this event.  You can find some  background information in the Blooming_Strong_Pack and specific information about the BStrong_Coffee_Morning. There’s also a template poster  a  Nomination Form and  a Nominee Letter.

If you need any additional information, please feel free to contact Jenny Bowes t: 020 8748 5717 – please let her know that you have heard about this through PPMA.

I would be very grateful if you could share and participate.  There are many many issues on our already busy to do lists I know, but our professional involvement in broader issues that will help change our workplaces and broader society for the better is critical. Please be in no doubt as to how much our support and involvement in promoting issues such as this is appreciated by the organisations involved.”

Best wishes

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 members and friends

You may have already seen through your twitter feeds that PPMA is again supporting the Public Sector Show (PSS).  We will be in Manchester on November 21^st supporting the workforce, recruitment and skills theme.  I will be participating in a main stage panel discussion on Fostering talent, expertise and leadership across the public sector workforce.  Additionally I will be chairing a further 2 sessions, one on Public sector leadership in challenging times and the other on Public sector recruitment and retention: opportunities and things to consider.  I am really pleased to say that PPMA stalwarts, Joanne Hyde, Justine Brooksbank and Sue Dunkley will be supporting these discussions.

Our involvement with Public Sector Show is really bearing fruit for us.  It is a very welcome opportunity to talk to professionals across Local, Central Government and 3^rd Sector.  We supported events in November 2016, in London earlier this June and we are already signed up to support our PSS colleagues throughout 2018.  PSS is free to delegates.  If you are interested in networking more widely across Public Service the show is well worth a visit.

For the first time this year we will have an exhibition stand as well as running the 3 sessions.  Member colleagues from Leeds and Trafford will be help us support that, but if you want to help too, we would be delighted to hear from you.  You can let us know on admin@ppma.org.uk.  Please put PSS Manchester in the subject line of your email.

Unfortunately, Caroline is unable to attend the Manchester event so I am afraid you are stuck with me!  However, please come along, I’d be delighted to see you.  In the meantime, you can read a Q & A spot here.  I’d also recommend that you download the PSS Report on the State of  the Public Sector 2017 here:  http://www.psshowmcr.co.uk/public-sector-show-insights-report/.

You can follow the show on twitter at #PSSMCR and on the web at http://www.psshowmcr.co.uk/.  @PPMA_HR will be tweeting in the run up to the event and on the day too, so keep an eye on our feed.

Best

Dear PPMA friends and colleagues.

This week we want to bring you up to speed with where we are with our research programme and further developments to our website.

As all HR&OD practitioners know, research is critical to our work.  It’s also important though that the research is practical and it delivers outcomes that we can use on the ground.  There’s so much work out there already from sponsors, consultancies, think tanks; that it can often be really difficult to know where to start with using it.  We took a decision at conference this year to ask our membership what they would like us to look at – and we’re pleased to say that together with Policy Board, we’ve agreed a programme of topics.  These topics are quite broad and they will cover strategic issues and also deliver some meaty operational findings for us to take forward in our day to day work.  The old adage about rubbish in, rubbish out in HR systems is the same for research.  So to make the most of this work, I strongly encourage you to contribute– we’re putting a lot of thought into how we conduct the research, share it and find ways of using it in future, so please make sure you have your views heard.

Each of the research areas will be sponsored by a PPMA Board member and one of our key sponsors and we’ll be keeping you updated on progress.  Please keep an eye out for further announcements on this over the next couple of weeks.  In the meantime the research topics are as follows:

The multi-generational workforce
The scope of this work will be cross sector and will have HPMA participation. However we are going to start with LG and other public sectors first and bring our health colleagues on board a little later.

The purpose of the research is to look at attitudes and expectations of different demographics within our workforces, but particularly focused on younger and older groups. Are there specific considerations we need to take into account in attracting younger employees and then integrating them in the workforce.

Within this, we can examine how do we identify, understand and respond to attitudes towards retirement amongst older colleagues.
What is the impact on women having children when they are later, people joining from other sectors and potentially not having the same pension pots as longer serving employees do.

Cracking the Health and Social Care conundrum
This work will be focused on identifying and really understanding what different Health and Social care delivery models exist and which ones work best.

We’re also keen to promote better ways of working across sectors. So we’ll look at what is the best way to build cross sector careers and encourage/embed more effective Heath and Social Care service integration. We want to identify whether there is a way to leverage apprenticeships and/or build generic/blended health and social care job families that will work across the sector. Can these mechanisms help people move from care to clinical work and vice versa?

We are also interested in whether there are new/additional retention strategies and mechanisms that we need to use to enable cross sector careers?

Employer Branding: Attracting people into Public Service and retaining them
In some ways, this work shares some overlap with the multigenerational workforce. The focus of this research is assessing what works best for us now and how applicable is it in meeting future challenges (e.g., Brexit related change in workforce supply, the continuing need to attract the millennials etc).

We want to understand whether a combination of initiatives work best, e.g., market premiums, golden hello’s, redefining job families. We’ll also examine whether previous PPMA sponsored work such as New Deal and 21st Century Workforce acts as a pull for attracting talent.

Brexit: Do we need to start planning for the workforce implications now?
There isn’t a news programme these days which doesn’t include Brexit. As a professional community, we need to better understand the extent of the Brexit impact and how we start planning – is this a case for strategic workforce planning and should we be taking a stronger line on encouraging this?

This again is a broader area and will cut across some of our other topics. This is a good things as it will reinforce our understanding that workforce issues rarely fit neatly into a little box.

Service Delivery Models
Public sector has been using many different types of delivery models now. We’ve seen regular updates and other papers on how successful models have been. But what we want to do is to take a closer look at whether there are particular workforce interventions that support a particular type of model, e.g., LATC, Combined Authority etc. It may be the case that structure isn’t necessarily a primary driver – what may well be critical is leadership, workforce development, good governance etc.

I’ve mentioned that we will be updating our website with some new research pages shortly.  Karen, our VP gives us an update on where we are with the next phase of website development. “We’re delighted with the feedback that we have had on our new website, but we always intended that we would do further work.  We want to make a number of things easier, especially around online membership registration, updates etc.  At the moment it is quite an unwieldy process and we want to bring that more up to date and easier for you.

We’ve also taken a thorough look at how we modernise our event booking process.  Phase 2 developments are currently underway and are due to be delivered at the end of October. We’re pleased to say that we’re going to be incorporating Eventbrite into our site – many of you will have used this before.  It’s a proven tool for allowing you to book attendance at a whole range of events.  Our plan is to use this for Conference 2018 booking, which will we open up during Autumn and for all of our regional events.  We’re excited about this as it will make it easier for all us to manage our event programme.

To help us complete this work we need to do quite a bit of work behinds the scenes on our membership database.  We know that some of you have had challenges in accessing knowledge zone, so we have put interim arrangements in place. We’re likely to need to continue with these interim arrangements until end October.  If you have any questions at all about this please email admin@ppma.org.uk and we will be happy to help you.

We’re working on the research pages at the moment and also updating our regional pages too.  We’re anticipating these will be ready in a few weeks, so please come back from week commencing 18^th September for more updates.”