The October edition of People Management carried an article in my regular column on the importance of social networking sites in society. My thoughts on this are that there is a danger that we could fall behind by not embracing the opportunities that these fast moving cyberspace developments offer. The next generation of workers will have been brought up using these sites and will not only expect to see their use in attracting them into organisations but also their use within the organisation.

There is vast potential, in my view, for us to think differently about a whole range of organisational communication, development attraction and other strategies but follow the link to the article to read more about this fascinating subject.

As it happens I have also met today with Karen Wormwell and Jon Coulter our colleagues from Ten Horizon who deliver this blog to PPMA followers! Karen and Jon were telling me about the exciting work they are developing with clients in the use of social networking to enhance brand and reputation. They also told me about a number of public sector organisations who are already doing this successfully such as Newcastle City Council with Twitter and Barnet Council with Facebook.

In another interesting development, I’m going to be taking a paper to the next Board meeting of PPMA to discuss how we might be bale to make use of social networking sites to attract more interest in PPMA, keep people up to date with our development, and to give opportunities for more interaction and discussion amongst members - watch this space.

Next week I’m off to speak at the SPDS Conference in St Andrews on behalf of PPMA and am hoping to use technology to post a live blog and photos from the event!

In the meantime have a great weekend.

Gill

Hi all

I would like to say a big thank you to everyone who took the time to vote in this year’s Personnel Today Top 40 Power Players.

The results were announced last week and I was delighted and shocked to see that I have been nominated by my peers as a top 10 Power Player in the Personnel Today poll. I’m in very elite company and feel very humble and honoured to be there.

This is even more so knowing that it’s my colleagues from across the public and private sector who have voted for me to be there. These are very important polls for raising the profile of people who represent the public sector. It’s important that we have impact and influence and being included in such prestigious lists of influencers does help.

Also in the top ten are Angela O’Connor from the NPIA and Martin Tiplady from the Metropolitan Police. A number of other public sector faces appear in the top 40 including our own Stephen Moir from Cambridgeshire CC, Graham White from Westminster City Council and David Amos from the Cabinet Office, who incidentally I’m meeting with soon to discuss how we can collaborate on the skills agenda.

Well done everyone and thanks to everyone who voted for your support.

Gill