Well, following up on my post from last week, I thought you’d all be pleased to hear that Gill Hibberd and I attended an event organised by the CIPD to launch their new programme “Shaping the Future”. This programme is intended to be a cornerstone of the CIPD’s policy and research agenda and will focus on the future of people management and the implications for H R as a consequence. Perhaps CIPD will draw upon PPMA’s Evolution or Extinction Theme for this year? This new research programme, unlike others, will be heavily influenced by HR practitioners like ourselves (Andy Albon and colleagues at Birmingham City Council have already signed up to be a case study I believe).

During the launch we heard an interesting presentation from Dr. Tim Miller, Director of People, Property and Assurance from Standard Chartered Bank. Tim made a lot of sense with what he said and the approach of his organisation to employee engagement was fascinating. As a side note I should add that in a room full of predominantly private sector HR people that Gill and I were both “winners” at the event during one of the exercises and were gifted with pens from the CIPD for our efforts to identify the most important factor in engaging and motivating employees. You guessed it, we both (independent of each other) identified Leadership and A Sense of Purpose as the key factor. What was really strange was the fact that we both also talked about the need for authentic leadership. Talk about continuity for the future of PPMA!

Anyway, what else to report? Well in People Management this week I’ve got another opinion piece - this time on employee relations. The purpose of the piece is to stimulate some debate (as always) and I’d be interested in your comments having read this.

It’s also worth saying that next week sees me head north to Scotland for the SPDS conference in St. Andrews. I’m delighted to have the opportunity to speak at the conference again this year and watch next week’s blog for some more news on this front.

Also, just a pointer towards the PPMA website to say that our intrepid adventurer, Dean Shoesmith, returned safely from America. Dean has produced a series of updates and information items to share his american conference experience with all of us and this will be appearing on the PPMA website - I recommend his report. However PPMA Board members have also been active in travelling the length and breadth of the UK - many thanks to Gill Hibberd and John Tonks for visiting the South West Regional Group. I understand that there was good engagement and attendance at the session - it’s great to hear that we have some flourishing regions out there! This also counts as another region visited by either the President or Vice President this year. A few more to go and we’ll be close to a full house.

Lastly some personal congratulations to HR colleagues from Castle Morpeth for being an award winning HR place to work - I’d say I was surprised, but I’m not - Paul Moody, the Council’s H R and Performance Manager, is someone I studied at college with. If anyone can create a fun working environment, it’s Paul or maybe that’s just my ‘alcohol fuelled’ memories of college?

Best wishes

Stephen

P.S. I’d love to get your feedback on any of the topics discussed in this post - it’s very easy to join in the conversation and get your views heard, just click on ‘Leave a comment’ underneath the headline of this post and type away.   

If you want to stay right up to date with all the latest blog postings it’s really simple - all you need to do is ’subscribe’ free. You can do that in a couple of ways, either via email by entering your email address in the box in the right hand column - you’ll receive the latest blog updates in your Inbox as soon as they’re published or via RSS by clicking the orange button.

Well, I’m finally back from holiday and I’d like to thank both Gillian and Dean for their contributions to the blog whilst I’ve been away. I’d particularly like to thank Gill for her extremely kind comments, even if they did make me feel very humble and slightly embarrassed!

Being on holiday made me realise just how much effort being PPMA President requires - I was pretty frazzled before having 2 weeks of sitting on a tropical beach not doing much. It isn’t for the faint hearted and means a “ruthless” focus on priorities at all times - both PPMA and the day job. The Association has been fortunate to have the services of some exceptional Presidents in the past and my level of respect for them has only increased as my own term of Office continues.

However, lots to update and lots going on (as always). Some key highlights as follows:

- PPMA has joined forces with Personnel Today to support the “Ditch the Default” campaign. This means that we are equally supporting the campaign to get Government to remove the default retirement age from law. For the ageing public sector workforce profile, it is a real no brainer to apply a default retirement age….people can make valued contributions to public services at any age and we should support this. I’d urge PPMA members to sign the PT petition on the Number 10 website, which can be found here.

- I promised to announce our new Lead Officers for PPMA. It was a hard set of decisions to make, but I’m delighted to confirm that Jack Markiewicz, Director of H R and Change at Swindon Borough Council, is our new Lead for Talent Management. Martin Rayson, Director of Resources from Boston Borough Council has been confirmed as our H R Transformation lead (I met with him and other colleagues last Friday, they are doing some great work). And last, but by no means least I’m really pleased to welcome Janice Joannou, Head of Organisational Development at the London Borough of Croydon, as our new Lead for Diversity. All talented, skilled and committed people - they’ll make immediate contributions to our work. The knock on effect however is that with Jack moving to take over Talent Management, we will need a new Lead Officer for Pensions - applications welcome folks for this critical role!

- You might have noticed that PPMA members did really well in the Personnel Today Power Players List for 2008 - I’m delighted we have 3 people in the top 10. Yours truly was gob smacked to be number 7, until a cheeky colleague suggested that only a Director of H R from Scotland could be 007…..don’t worry no bad Sean Connery impressions will follow!  I did however want to say thanks to all those who chose to vote for me and other PPMA colleagues - it’s a privilege to represent you and public sector H R generally.

- Anyway talking of foreign travel earlier in the Blog, I thought you be interested to know that our very own Dean Shoesmith is currently undertaking an American sojourn - to Las Vegas of all places. Dean kindly agreed to represent the PPMA at our American cousins annual conference. We’ll all get a chance to share in Dean’s letter from America upon his return via the PPMA website (Letter from America is a good song by the way - but not as good as 500 miles for all you Proclaimers fans out there….Anne Gibson, you have been named and shamed!).

And that’s it for now folks - more to update later this week, including CIPD related contributions by PPMA.

Best wishes as always.

Stephen

Stephen has now returned refreshed and ready for work, following his two weeks in the sun.

Before departing on his trip, he wrote a post updating you all on the events that happened during the previous two weeks, including the outcomes of the Policy Board meeting in Cambridge. The post can be found here.

Did you know the expression having a ‘Hey’ day dates back to an Anglo-Saxon use of ‘hey’ as an expression of great enthusiasm and happiness? A person’s ‘heyday’ is the period of her or his greatest vigour and success.

If only this were the case with the latest position on the UK default retirement age. I use the Heyday analogy, as this is the name of the case that has been commented upon by the European Advocate General before the matter finally washes up in the European Court of Justice. For those of you who haven’t been following this case it’s about the Heyday organisation who want people to work beyond the age of 65 and consider that the UK’s current stance with a default retirement age of 65 is discriminatory.

The Advocate General commenting on the case has said that the UK’s stance may not necessarily be discriminatory…but at this stage it is only a comment and the case has to be finally determined by the European Court of Justice.

I do hope the Government uses the opportunity of the Single Equalities Bill to sort this mess out. The default retirement age is really difficult for employers to follow and many end up unsure of what to do when their employees reach the age of 65…even some with large HR and legal departments at their disposal; so spare a thought for small businesses.

In my view, the ‘default’ retirement age is too woolly and we need a clearer statutory position. So please can we have some clarity before I revert to some good old Anglo Saxon expletives?

Dean Shoesmith - Vice President (Elect) PPMA

Last week we were all sat watching the turmoil unravel in the British banking system never expecting it to turn into such an unprecedented global issue. As many of us help our organisations deal with the impact of losing money in the Icelandic banking collapse, it seems slightly ironic that just a couple of weeks ago both Stephen and myself participated in a CIPD roundtable discussion with a range of HR Directors on the impact of the economic downturn. I doubt that either of us expected the national situation to be so fast moving at that time!

Difficult as current times may be, they do present opportunities for us. Something very dear to my heart is the value proposition of the HR function. How better can we display value in current times than prompting strategic debates at the highest levels in our organisations on the impact of the economic downturn.

Whilst this may usually be the domain of finance departments, I believe that HR has just as big a contribution to make to the debate. The impact on morale, engagement, mobility of staff, pension fund implications, impact of energy costs and commodity costs on balance sheets, the need to achieve greater efficiencies to name but a few - all have significant HR implications.

In my own organisation, I’ve prepared a discussion paper for Cabinet on the key issues for informal debate. I’m happy to share this with others if it would be helpful. Sharing knowledge is something else we should do more of - I’m a great believer in not reinventing the wheel.

Stephen is back next week so I will be handing back over to him.

In the meantime have a relaxing weekend!

Regards

Gill

Colleagues – you may have read a topical piece in the Sunday Telegraph about Local Government Chief Executives’ pay over the weekend (Sunday Telegraph, 5 October 2008). The article provided a commentary on the so-called 50 top paid Local Government chief executives and was written in the style of condemnation of how big a bill the Council Tax payer is footing. In fairness, the article was balanced by quotes from Paul Coen Chief Executive of the Local Government Association where he put into perspective the amount of responsibility chief executives have in terms of people, budget and other resources – as well as the challenges many face in trying to provide services to deprived communities.

Like many articles in the press some of it has to be read with caution and I don’t think the list of the alleged top 50 earners was necessarily accurate as a league table…some big names and Councils seemed to be missing to me. Probably what would have been accurate would have been to say this was the top 50 earners of those Local Authorities that responded to the Freedom of Information Act disclosure request from the Sunday Telegraph.

In simple terms it’s correct to say that senior pay in Local Government has increased beyond the rate of inflation over recent years. However, in my view, this simply boils down to the old Keynesian economic law of the balance of supply and demand. Securing the supply of scarce talent carries a price tag. There aren’t many people out there in the employment market with the skills set to run a Local Authority. Having the leadership skills to run multi-million pound organisations that have a huge array of stakeholder interests to balance is certainly no cake walk and compared to the level of skill, complexity and responsibility in the private sector, or public industry, the pay of a Local Authority Chief Executive is still very modest.

I can remember a chief executive saying to me once that unlike other sectors he’d worked in, being a Local Government Chief Executive wasn’t just a job - it was a way of life; you’re almost married to the job where Members can - quite literally – contact you day, night, or weekend. So the ‘fat cat’ often doesn’t even have the chance to skim the cream off the milk - they’re too busy.

Dean Shoesmith - Vice President (Elect) PPMA

Stephen is now off on a very well deserved break, so its over to me and other colleagues to fill the blog spots.

In this blog post, I’d like to take the opportunity to say a few words about Stephen and the rest of the PPMA policy board. Under Stephen’s leadership we have seen our organisation go from strength to strength. Our media profile is as high as it’s ever been and our credibility as an organisation is also strong. The organisation has been through incredible change over the past three years but it is now on very firm foundations from which we can continue to grow. The development of the organisation is a team effort and all Members play a role but Stephens influence, leadership and steer have been exceptional. So a very big thank you to him and the rest of the board for all their contributions. 

Stephen and I met with Jackie Orme (Chief Executive, CIPD) last week as he mentions in his recent blog post. I felt it was a very productive meeting and I’ve agreed to continue to meet with Jackie throughout next year with the aim of bringing the CIPD and PPMA closer together. I’m delighted that Jackie has agreed to come along to the PPMA Conference next year and will be one of our keynote speakers on the Friday. You should start to see marketing material for the conference in October and watch out for the early bird discount if you book before the end of the year.

The Personnel Today Top 40 Power Players were announced this week. The public sector was better represented than ever with a number of PPMA colleagues featuring in the list including: 

• Martin Tiplady, HR Director at the Met Police at No2
• Stephen Moir, PPMA President and Director of People and Policy at Cambridgeshire CC at No7
• Angela O’Connor, Immediate Past president of PPMA and Chief People Officer at the NPIA at No8
• Jim Savage, PPMA lead on pay and Director of HR and OD at Cumbria CC at No14
• Myself, Gillian Hibberd!, Vice President of PPMA and Director of People and Policy at Buckinghamshire CC at No18
• Alan Warner, PPMA Lead on Talent and Director of People and Property at Hertfordshire CC at No24

Well done to everyone in the top 40!

To all blog readers out there, it’s important for the visibility of PPMA that we have members featured in the list, so please vote when you get similar events opportunities in the future.

Have a great weekend.

Gill