It’s been a busy couple of weeks on the PPMA front. A flurry of media activity have resulted in me commenting on a range of issues from pay restraint to the minimum wage for young people to flexible working to the trend in new job titles for senior staff in the public sector.

I’ve also been out and about representing PPMA. Monday saw me back in my old stomping ground of the North West region where I gave a presentation on the role of HR. Big thanks go to Alison and Lisa for making me so welcome. Its great to see the region thriving and developing. I’m also grateful to our friends and colleagues at The MJ, Dave Lawrence and Heather Jameson, for their sponsorship at the meeting.

Today I’ve been to Birmingham to speak at a national Organisational Development programme run by the IDeA and Stanton Marris. I spoke on the topic of organisational design and there was a lot of interest from participants who are about to start their own restructure programmes. The whole issue of transformation, cost cutting and organisational design will be covered in a number of skills sessions at the PPMA Conference so if you haven’t yet booked your place please take a look and reserve your spot!

Best wishes

Gill

The following article features PPMA President Gill Hibberd and Stephen Moir:

1. Is the public sector picking up private sector habits? published 25th January 2010 on personneltoday.com

The following article features PPMA President Gill Hibberd:

1. Minimum Wage may be frozen for younger workers published 12th January 2010 on AP Partnership’s Blog

The following articles feature PPMA President Gill Hibberd:

1. Minimum wage freeze proposal could disengage younger workers published 7th January 2010 on personneltoday.com
2. NHS Workforce Bulletin (Issue 195) published 21st December 2009

Happy New Year to everyone. I do hope that you all had a restful festive period and are now feeling refreshed enough to start the New Year with lots of energy.

There is no doubt that this year will be a rollercoaster ride for many of us as we struggle to manage the implications of dramatically reduced public sector funding. You can all be sure that PPMA will be doing everything it can to support it members through difficult times by offering thought leadership, peer support, best practice and opportunities to discuss topical issues.

The first of these opportunities will of course be the impending PPMA Conference in March this year. I can’t quite believe that my year has gone so quickly. I am not yet in ‘wind down’ mode and have lots of things that I want to see progressed before I hand over the reigns to Dean’s very capable hands. In particular, I want to see the next phase of PPMA’s exciting proposals for business development in place and I will be taking a report to the next Policy Board in February on my plans for seeing this happen.

I have some Policy Board changes to notify you of too…unfortunately we have recently seen the resignation of both Jim Savege and Lorraine Hallam from the Board. I’m delighted to inform you that Mike Cook from Camden has now been appointed the new Lead Officer for Reward and that Leatham Green from East Sussex has been appointed the new Lead Officer for Wellbeing and Worklessness. I wish both lots of luck in their new roles and look forward to welcoming them to the next Board meeting.

We are now starting to see the first signs of election fever with the Conservatives campaign launch this week. I suspect that things will hot up even more as we approach the spring. Hopefully the date of the election will be revealed soon to put us all out of our misery.

Over the next couple of weeks I have a number of PPMA duties including a visit to the North West region and will be speaking at a conference on OD in Birmingham on behalf of PPMA. Other presidential duties include media interviews, which keep me busy and writing my regular People Management article. As always comments are always welcome on all of the topics I write about.

In the meantime, stay safe in the snow.

Regards

Gill