Hello PPMA members and friends

Last Thursday, the 9 December, we held our first face to face event for over 2 years to celebrate the achievements of the winners of the last 2 years PPMA Excellence in People Management Awards 2020 and 2021. We also want to thank our fantastic sponsors for continuing to support us during the last 2 years – Penna, Crown Commercial Service, Matrix SCM, Oracle, Tribepad, Commercial Services Group, Salary Finance, Greater.Jobs, Osborne Thomas  Hammond Clarke, Real World Group, Rainmaker Group, The MJ Innerprofessional  Working Families #letsimproveworkplacewellbeing, and last but not least Rest Less for hosting the event.

The event was held at London Scottish House, in London and was a fitting venue to host our first get together and celebrate, here are some photos from the day and a video will be following shortly. A full list of award winners can be found on our website.

Apart from having a get together and celebrate with our winners, sponsors, friends and colleagues we also wanted to say a special thankyou and farewell to a couple of PPMA stalwarts for many years.

Stuart Elrick, who we said a fond farewell to in 2018 at our annual conference, held in Newcastle, with a lifetime achievement award, but who came back in 2020 to help with the Treasurer and Secretary roles in the PPMA. Stuart has finally said enough is enough, and is formally retiring. He has been a fantastic contributor and supporter of the PPMA for over 40 years and the association cannot thank him enough for everything he has done. Happy retirement Stuart.

The other key member of the PPMA that we need to say au revoir to is Leatham Green, our Executive Director.

I met Leatham when I joined the PPMA board back in 2012 and I was immediately struck by this incredibly dynamic, flamboyant and yet sensible, pragmatic and extremely switched on individual. Leatham was promoting the virtues of social media to PPMA board members long before it became as prolific as it has. He has managed the PPMA talent programmes – Peer into the Future, Rising Star, Apprentice and Ones to Watch – so brilliantly and through their unique structure furthered the careers of so many HR professionals over many years. He truly is a warm, fun, generous and inspiring person.

In the last few years, when Leatham left his Director of HR/ OD role at Orbis he set up his Mindful HR Centre and at the same time agreed to become PPMA part time Executive Director responsible for handling not just our talent programmes, but our commercial sponsors and interests and our awards and conference programmes. It is no exaggeration to say that without Leatham’s drive, enthusiasm, work ethic and commercial savviness that the PPMA would probably not have survived the last 2 years of the Covid 19 pandemic.

Leatham has now secured himself a fantastic new role with Oracle which will take up all his time, but he will remain a friend and advocate of the PPMA. So, it is an honour to give Leatham a coveted and well-earned PPMA Lifetime Achievement Award. Thank you Leatham for all that you have done for the PPMA over many years.

The PPMA without Leatham Green and Stuart Elrick

Although we have lost two great supporters and contributors to the PPMA we have put in place arrangements to cover the work that they did. I will be covering the Honorary Treasurer & Secretary role, and in May after our conference it will be easier to do this because I hand over the Presidency to Gordon McFarlane.

Julie Biggs has been a board member for many years and has supported Leatham on our talent programmes and she will be managing our talent and awards programmes going forward.

Some of you will remember Barry Pirie, past PPMA president who was a long serving board member as well. He knows the workings of the association well and he has agreed to take over the commercial duties that Leatham undertook.  Therefore, together with our office admin, experienced finance officer and strategic management board we consider that the arrangements we have in place readily compensate for the loss of Leatham and Stuart.

We look forward to working with all of our members, sponsors, supporters and friends for many years to come.

Steve Davies, PPMA President