It was the PPMA Policy Board meeting last Friday and we had a very large agenda to get through. It was a fast paced meeting with lots of important decisions made that will in time affect PPMA members.

The first item of interest was an update on the PPMA Business plan. This is an important document, which will determine the future direction of PPMA. The draft was posted on our website for comments so thank you to those who took the time to respond. Your comments were reported to the Policy Board and were debated at length.

The next, and hopefully final, iteration of the document will be presented to the Policy Board in February next year. Topical issues such as membership development, commercial planning and our future membership offering will all be addressed in the document.

The Board also agreed the next steps on an important piece of work on the future of reward in the public sector. I’m very excited about what we are trying to do as an organisation on reward. Rather than sitting on the sidelines and commenting on existing reward models we are looking to develop a picture of what we think the new model should be for the future. Watch this space for further developments.

The Board also agreed to go ahead with a proposal to set up its own Facebook page so any fellow active ‘Facebookers’ out there be sure to sign up when we go live.

Other items included a report on Membership Development, which we will now take forward as part of the business planning work and an update on the exciting conference that Dean is planning for next year. Finally we had updates from the regions and lead officers.

The Personnel Today Awards were held on the evening preceding the Board. PPMA hosted a table and were delighted to have as our guest important friends and partner organisations such as Julie Towers from the Tribal Group, Jan Parkinson from the LGE and Chris Johnson from Mercers. It was a good night for the public sector with Birmingham City Council winning yet another award for their fantastic work on employee engagement through the Birmingham Best programme. Also shortlisted were Lancashire County Council, the Metropolitan Police and our very own Past President, Stephen Moir in the category of HR Director of the Year. Thank you to everyone for attending and I hope you enjoyed the evening as much as I did.

Bye for now

Gill

Recent news article from People Management commenting on Gill Hibberd’s speech at the CIPD Conference in Manchester.

To read the article click here.

I’m sat at the Midland Hotel in Manchester having chaired a session at the CIPD Conference yesterday. The Midland is such a great venue for a conference (but I would say that wouldn’t I!!). It certainly is bringing back some great memories of our own PPMA Conference earlier this year. The session I chaired yesterday was on transforming HR Efficiency in the public sector. Joe Dugdale, HR Director from the Borders Agency and David McIlhinney, Chief Executive of Liverpool Direct were my co-speakers. I may have caused a little bit of controversy when I said that we in HR created more bureaucracy in organisations than any other function and how its time we get back to ’sensible HR’. Watch out for the headlines in the trade press!

Jackie Orme from the CIPD is very visible at the conference and in my view is doing a superb job for the profession. Jacqui has delivered remarkable change during her short tenure so far and I have great confidence in her plans for the future. I really feel that our profession is in very safe hands. Well-done Jackie!

As usual there were a few drinks to be had in the bar last night. A number of friends and colleagues were around including Martin Tiplady from the Metropolitan Police who won an award for training at the CIPD Awards.

Leatham Green from West Sussex was also there celebrating being shortlisted for an award. Our friend, David Fairhurst from McDonald’s was in his usual exuberant form and had an amazing belt on - if you bump into him ask him about his ‘bling belt’!

Anyway its back to reality for me now and a long drive home.

Best wishes

Gill

I’m always struck by those organisations that manage to create a sense of fun at work and how much it seems to impact on engagement and creativity. I truly believe that by creating more fun at work we will dramatically increase productivity and participation. I came across a couple of great videos on YouTube that I want share with you, which show just how much ‘fun’ can impact on how people respond to their environment.

Its also worth checking out the website www.thefuntheory.com to see more examples of how creating a sense of fun can impact on how people behave. Perhaps there are lessons for us all in here somewhere?

In the meantime, I hope this has helped to bring a bit more fun into your day!!

Gill

It’s the PPMA Policy Board meeting next week and I’m busy preparing the agenda with colleagues. It looks as though it will be a lengthy and busy meeting with a number of meaty issues being discussed such as the next steps in the PPMA Business Plan, the future of reward in the public sector, PPMA and social networking, membership development, etc.

As usual, I will post a blog following the meeting to update members on the outcomes.

This week sees the start of the annual CIPD Conference which has moved to Manchester. A number of PPMA people will be speaking there including myself, Sue Scrivens from Gloucestershire CC, Leatham Green from East Sussex CC, Jim Savege from Cumbria CC, Angela O’Connor from the NPIA, Cathy Butterworth and Christine Brereton from GMP, Richard Crouch from Somerset CC, Martin Tiplady from the Metropolitan Police. What a fantastic showing for the public sector and PPMA!

My session is on Transforming HR Efficiency in the Public Sector and if it’s a topic that is of interest to you, you may want to look up the research publication from the CIPD entitled The Challenge for Public Sector HR - Responding to the Operational efficiency Programme. It will be published this week to coincide with the conference.

Last week I attended and spoke at the East of England regional PPMA Conference. Not only was there and excellent turnout but Anne Gibson had also pulled together fantastic line up of speakers.  If that’s anything to go by, I am looking forward to her annual PPMA Conference in 2011 already!  Which also reminds me to also mention this year’s conference. As you will have seen, Dean is busy booking a number of excellent, international speakers. It is really lining up to be a fascinating and challenging conference - one not to miss!

Bye for now

Gill

Gill and Stephen both contributed to this HR Magazine article entitled ‘How far should public-sector HR outsourcing go?’

Interesting article in People Management on ‘Outsourcing’ of recruitment (featuring comments from Gill Hibberd) published on 5th November 2009.

Anne Gibson and I have just spent a couple of days in St Andrews, Scotland with wonderful and hospitable colleagues from SPDS. Their annual conference this year was on the topic of ‘Delivering excellence in times of change’.

Their new President, Karen Algie, delivered a passionate opening speech about the difference HR can make in changing organisations following which I spoke on how HR can lead organisations through the downturn. At the annual dinner on the first evening there were moving tributes to our dear friend Hogan Burke, who died suddenly in August this year. It was lovely to see Hogan’s wife Moira and his daughter Abigail there to hear the tributes.

On the second day there was a charismatic presentation from Dame Eliza Manningham Buller about the leadership challenges she faces whilst in charge of MI5. Her heartfelt view was that leadership is all about playing to your strengths, giving credit to people, thanking people for their effort and being humane. Her powerful presentation was littered with examples of how she put this into practice at MI5.

It is always a pleasure to be with our SPDS colleagues and I look forward to our two organisations building an even closer relationship over the coming years.

Have a great weekend.

Gill

PPMA officers regularly contribute to articles in the HR trade press and we thought it would be a great idea to share those articles with you. 

So we’ve decided that whenever an article is published, we’ll give you an easy to follow link to it via this blog…just look out for the tag ‘PPMA In The Media’ to keep up to date with all the latest press articles…and if you seen any we haven’t mentioned, please do let us know.

First up is an article from Personnel Today (featuring Gill Hibberd) published on 29th October 2009 - Local government workers’ union submits 2.5% pay claim for 2010.