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

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!

Our post this week is a ‘Workforce News’ video podcast from our colleagues at the LGA and it features an interview with our President Sue Evans, who talks about the Apprenticeship Levy and it’s likely implications for councils. Phil Bundy, Senior Employment Law Advisor also talks about the legal aspects and impacts of the Levy.

To kick things off, Sarah Messenger who is the outgoing Head of Workforce at the LGA, reflects on her time in the role and the work that she has been involved with.  It’s a must watch!

We’re delighted to announce the launch of of our 2017 Excellence in People Management Awards and this video featuring Caroline Nugent, PPMA VP, Andrew Blake-Herbery CX at Havering Council and Stacey-Rebekka Karlsson Head of Government and Public Services at Guardian News and Media, explains more about the awards and this year’s judging event.

It’s really important to recognise and celebrate the great work we all do, so please do put forward your entries.  The closing date is Friday the 10th March and to find out more about the awards and how to enter click here.

The November board meeting took place last week in London and lots of exciting things were discussed…and to keep you all in the loop, Sue Evans has recorded another of her brilliant video blog posts.

Our blog post this week is on employment law and the changes coming up around Exit Payments and the Gender Pay reporting requirements, as well some of the Gender Pay issues facing local government. The video podcast produced by the LGA Workforce Team, also features an interview with the Leader of Camden Council, Cllr Sarah Hayward. Camden have done some excellent work in this area and Cllr Hayward shares some of their experiences and the very positive outcomes from their innovative approaches.

This is the second video blog from Sue Evans and it comes fresh from her return from the SPDS Conference in Scotland. Sue talks about what she learnt at the event as well as sharing some of the latest PPMA news.

As you will know, we recently joined forces with our friends at the LGA and SOLACE to put together a ebook called Walk Tall. It’s based on the brilliant research done by the University of Birmingham on the ’21st Century Public Servant and the book is full of inspiring and engaging stories written by people from around the country, who work across the public sector are proud to be called 21st Century Public Servants.

Our blog post this week is a short video which tells the story behind the book and in it we hear from  some of the contributors including Sarah Messenger from the LGA, Catherine Mangan (who conducted the research along with Catherine Needham) from the University of Birmingham, Steve Winterflood Chief Executive at South Staffordshire Council and Sue Hawkins at Stockport Council.  We hope that you enjoy the film and if you haven’t read the Ebook yet,  here’s a link.

Last week Sue Evans ran a very successful ‘guest’ webinar for The Improvement Service (IS) who are the national improvement organisation for local government in Scotland and the reaction to it has been unsurpassed – so we though that we’d share the seminar with you.

In it Sue talks about the challenges Warwickshire County Council face including £190m savings required over a 3 year period and the huge impact this has had on the workforce. It’s the story of their journey and how they have tackled those challenges.

Sue Evans

PPMA President and Head of Human Resources and Organisational Development at Warwickshire County Council

Most of you will know that the latest PPMA ‘Away Day’ board meeting was held at Aston University in Birmingham late last week. It was packed programme and to keep you all up to date with what was discussed, our blog post this week is a short video update from President, Sue Evans. There’s plenty to do and lots of great things in store – we hope that you are as excited about the coming year as we are!

If you’ve any comments or questions about any of the things mentioned in the film, we’d love to hear from you. Just click on the comments box underneath the headline above and type away.

Sue Evans

PPMA President