Dear PPMA colleagues and friends.

We’re delighted to introduce Stacey-Rebekka Karlsson as this week’s guest blogger. For those of your who don’t know Stacey-Rebekka Karlsson is Head of Partnerships at the Guardian and founder of the “Women In” series.  She’s worked in Media and Events for 16 years and with the Public Sector for almost 11 of those. When she’s not busy at work, she plays Saxophone in a band made up of Local Government professionals, and is a keen baker! Stacey is writing this week on a subject dear to her heart and one that Caroline in particular, has spoken passionately about before.

Stacey is leading the “Women in” series and here she tells us more about it:

“I started the “Women in” series as a result of my own experiences, and my desire to improve things for others.

It’s crazy to think that only 100 years ago, women weren’t allowed to vote in the UK. Even when they did get the vote in 1918, women had to be over 30 years old to vote. And it was only a couple of years ago that same-sex marriage was legalised in England, Wales and Scotland.

Despite it seeming odd to me that what I would consider to be basic human rights being only so recently legalised in most of the UK, there are plenty of places in the world they aren’t.  Same-sex marriage is still illegal in Northern Ireland for example. We have come a long way, BUT that doesn’t mean  there’s not still lots of work to be done, not just for women – but to ensure equality for everyone.

I’ve worked with the public sector for almost 11 years now. In that time we’ve seen huge change, in most ways apart from, that is, gender equality.  The Guardian’s Public Leaders Network recently reported that according to the Fawcett Society, gender equality in local government will not be achieved until 2065. That is beyond most of our lifetimes, and, quite simply, is not good enough.

By striving for, and achieving gender equality, we’ll also be helping ensure the other pillars of diversity are supported. After all, half of the UK population is female. If we ensure women are treated fairly, there’s a good chance we’ll have a much fairer society.

What’s more, it’s proven that more diverse organisations are more successful. Research by McKinsey looked at the relationship between levels of diversity and company financial performance. The research is based on financial data and leadership demographics compiled from hundreds of organisations and thousands of executives in the  UK, US, Latin America and Canada. They found a positive correlation between more diverse organisations and increased revenue. For example gender-diverse companies were 15% more likely to outperform the national industry median, and ethnically diverse companies were a staggering 35% more likely to outperform their competitors. These are compelling results.

I’ve developed “Women in” as a network for women, by women. The team here at the Guardian have worked tirelessly to create a series of content and events that will challenge, nurture and support women across all sectors and inspire the next generation of female leaders.

And we want you to help us shape the content. Please email in any suggestions, or requests to be involved. And by the way, we also welcome positive support from our male colleagues.  The events are all free for public sector employees. We want to facilitate discussions and debates but we also want to provide a platform for professionals to meet one another, help them build their own networks, so that together we can make the working environment a fairer, more enjoyable, more diverse place for everyone.”

Our next events are

Women in Public Sector Leadership  –  3^rd November in Manchester

Women in Public Sector – 21^st November, also in Manchester

Guardian Pride – March 2018 , a celebration of LGBT+ Professionals, London

To get further information or be involved, please contact women.in@theguardian.com or Stacey-Rebekka.Karlsson@theguardian.com

Stacey-Rebekka Karlsson is Head of Partnerships at the Guardian

Dear PPMA colleagues and friends

As you know our President, Caroline Nugent and PPMA Policy Board members have been working hard on our new branding and approach to marketing the great work PPMA does. As part of that work, we have decided that we want to make more use of our ‘Let’s talk, people’ strapline. We really like it and think it helps us develop some common branding.

We’re finalising our research programme and events calendar for the year and you will start to see these being branded with our new themes. They are quite broad, align with our key business plan objectives and priorities. So, here they are…….

• Let’s Talk: Leadership
• Let’s Talk: Transformation
• Let’s Talk: Developing our organisations
• Let’s Talk: Future Workforce
• Let’s Talk: Digital
• Let’s Talk: Wellbeing
• Let’s Talk: Evidence
• Let’s Talk: PPMA Global

You’ll notice that we’ve run a number of events recently with two of our Platinum sponsors under the Let’s Talk: Digital theme. Jobsgopublic and Matrix SCM have offered our members and colleagues from other public services their own perspective on this red hot issue. And of course our joint research with EduServ is absolutely focused on the digital agenda and we’ve a Webinar event coming up with them this week.

We think that using these themes gives us a bit of additional clarity and structure in terms of organising our offering to you. It also means that we have the flexibility to examine a number of issues within a theme. This is important because, as we know, it’s not always easy – or desirable – to fit our work into neat boxes and definitions. So for example, the issue of pay and reward will continue to capture our attention as HR professionals. We might choose to look at this under our Let’s Talk: Future Workforce theme, or indeed Let’s Talk: Developing our organisations.

We’ll be updating the website shortly to explain a bit more about each theme. Please do let us know what you think, we read all of your emails and comments and we’ll respond as quickly as we can.

Next week, Caroline will be launching a new series of blog posts on Let’s Talk: Leadership and VP Karen Grave, sets the scene for us.

“Both Caroline and I were delighted to attend the launch of the Women in Public Service project in London on July 24th. This critical project is led by Stacey-Rebecca Karlsson at The Guardian, who as you probably know, is a great friend to the PPMA and she is also a significant role model in the media world. Like many of us – male and female, Stacey has been perplexed by the findings of the recent Fawcett report and Caroline will have plenty to say on this next week.

We often think about the scarcity of women in senior leadership positions in terms of diversity. As HR professionals, we are absolutely duty bound to implement government legislation, but I think that we would all privately acknowledge that there are times that government policy doesn’t always deliver what it’s best intentions tried to do. I have started to wonder whether the best way of thinking about this is to think through the lens of leadership instead. And of course, by doing the right thing on the ground and not getting distracted by complex initiatives!

That view was reinforced by an inspiring introduction to the Women in Public Service project by Jo Miller, SOLACE President and Chief Executive of Doncaster Metropolitan Borough Council. Jo’s view – and I think she is dead right – is that in the most basic analysis, women make up half the population. Focusing on gender balance then increases the likelihood that the decisions we make for our citizens will be better. I loved this and I think the focus on the outcomes we deliver for our citizens is the goal that we must not lose sight of.

Jo, through her utterly authentic approach to leadership – i.e., she’s really honest –has taken some flak for her dedication to developing women in leadership. The legitimate questions about representation of all groups – religious, ethnic, sexual orientation are, of course, important and protected by law. But, as we all know women do not have the monopoly on being gay, straight, white, black, brown, Catholic, Muslim, Jewish and so on. Jo’s onto something I think by framing this as an issue of service delivery and I hope this might be an effective way of ensuring we address the Fawcett findings.

In addition to Jo, we had input from Stacey, Caroline, Terry McDougall (SOLACE in Business), Deborah Cadman (newly announced Chief Executive of the West Midlands Combined Authority) and Selena Lansley (Head of Workforce, LGA). It was a fantastic, thought provoking evening and I am looking forward to seeing what comes out of this work.

I’m delighted to say that Caroline will be using our Let’s Talk: Leadership theme to introduce a series of blogs and events on Fawcett and the Women in Public Services project. Tune in next week for her inaugural blog on one of her key presidential priorities”.