Dear PPMA colleagues and friends.

I hope you are enjoying this wonderful weather.  Last week the team was at the first of the two Public Sector Show conferences this year.  And, we had help from our friends at JobsGoPublic and The Guardian.

I had the pleasure of opening this year’s Workforce and Leadership workstream and invited all the days delagtes to attend as many sessions as they could – the attendance for all of the workstream sessions throughout the day was great. And this workstream is proving to be incredibly popular for our PSS colleagues overall.

Our second sessions were on Recruitment and Retention challenges caused by Brexit and the other very much focusing on Multigenerational Workforces. We had a couple of special guests in that session. Matt Burrows, our One to Watch 2018 joined us and Liv Harris, from Jobsgopublic joined us to walk participants through the research we jointly did and published at Annual Conference. We had some really interesting questions from the audience, particularly around the research. We’ll be looking at scoping the next part of that research over the summer, so if you have any comments you would like to make please let us know.

In the afternoon, I attended a panel chaired by Peter Cheese, CEO of CIPD.  I was was joined by our good friend Graeme McDonald, MD of SOLACE, the wonderful Deb McKenzie, People Director at Public Health England and Jessica Studdert from NLGN who brought a fascinating dimension to the discussion. I have had the pleasure of speaking on PSS panels with Graeme and Deb before, and I always enjoy the discussion with them and talking about the changes that have happened since our previous sessions.

One of the aims of our 4 way MOU is to find ways to help HR & OD colleagues gain experience across public sector as a whole. We already have some fantastic role models who have already demonstrated their capacity to do this. Deb is one of them and we’ll be hearing more from her in an upcoming article in People Management.

Grace also joined us for the day and manned our stand. We were chuffed with the number of people who came to visit and over 30 people signed up for our newsletter and we hope to see some more new members. Matt chipped in during the day and we also had support from the wonderful Stuart McKeown from The Guardian. We’re very grateful for our sponsors and their help in events like this.

It’s on to Manchester now for our next PSS. It’s being held on 20^th November at Manchester Central so keep your diary free!  Leatham and I will be with the PSS team over the next couple of weeks to work on our contribution to the day. So more to come in the next months.

Dear PPMA colleagues and friends.

It’s that time of the year again when we start our run up to the first of the 2 annual Public Sector Shows and Leatham and I along with other guests, will be contributing to a number of PPMA specific sessions and broader panels.

The Public Sector Show is running four key themes this year, Digital and Technology, Finance & Corporate, Workforce & Leadership, and Estates & Infrastructure.  The breadth of that offering is a good opportunity for PPMA as we often get people coming to our sessions who aren’t HR & OD professionals. So it’s a good way of raising awareness of PPMA, but more broadly ensuring that we do our bit to explain why workforce issues matter to everyone in public service organisations.

We are running 2 panels – one on ‘Recruitment, retention and workforce in the context of Brexit’ and the other on ‘Delivering effective multigenerational working’. There will be a session on ‘Delivering organisational transformation’ with colleagues from SOLACE, Public Health England and NLGN.

The show is free for PPMA for people who work in the public sector and you can register to attend here and find out more about the panels and sessions we’re involved with on our website. Also keep an eye on our social media channels and www.psshow.co.uk for more updates.  We really hope to see you there!

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