It’s Sunday evening and the prospect of going into work isn’t half as appealing as watching another bout of Phil and Holly on daytime TV. Isn’t my throat just a little bit sore, or my nose prone to an extra wipe of the Kleenex? Time to throw a quick ’sicky’ methinks…or is it?

April sees the launch of the new fit note - the note replaces the old sick note. This new government initiative follows the excellent and pioneering work of Dame Carol Black and in particular her report ‘Caring for a healthier tomorrow’.

Dame Black’s lobbying of Government has made ministers review the need to get Britain working properly as the cost to the economy of absenteeism is estimated to be an eye-watering (not conjunctivitis!) £100 billion per annum (see People Management, 25th February 2010, pp 19-22 for a fuller account).

However, despite the very laudable intentions to reduce absence and ensure employees are working well for their own health and wellbeing, the Jury’s out as to whether the new fit note is actually fit for purpose? If you were able to attend the 2010 PPMA conference on 23rd March, you would have heard Stuart Chamberlain of Croner, voiced concern about the practical implementation of the new fit note during his presentation on emerging employment law issues.

The concern includes the culture change for GP’s who have had years of looking at what patients can’t do rather than what they can do and the inevitable risk-aversion culture that is embedded when consideration is given to returning someone to work early.

GP’s may also struggle to understand the working context and environment of a patient and therefore be reluctant to advise early return.

The fit note is also unlikely to tackle all forms of short-term absence - such as my introductory tableau above.

Still, one good thing for HR practitioners is that line manager customers are likely to be knocking on your door to seek advice on how to make the necessary adjustments to employees’ work to comply with the fit note, or indeed, whether or not they should accept the recommendations made on the fit note in the first place. Let’s hope you don’t all become stressed out dealing with it!

Dean

Chancellor Alastair Darling made his budget statement this week on Wednesday 24th March. There are some glimmers of hope for public sector services and possibly the axe we’ve been expecting didn’t fall as heavily as we had feared.

EMPLOYMENT IMPLICATIONS

Of most significance from this year’s Budget, from an employment perspective, was the Chancellors’ announcement that ‘The Young Person’s Guarantee will be extended until the March 2012. This means that for the next two years no-one under 24 will need to be unemployed for longer than six months before being offered work or training’.

I see this as a positive announcement in the support of young people not in employment, education or training (NEET), as we know this recession has had a particularly adverse impact on young people and their prospects of finding meaningful employment and a meaningful place in society. This will help support our work in the public sector to stimulate jobs and training for 16-24 year olds, in particular via apprenticeships and work experience.

PUBLIC SECTOR AND PUBLIC SPENDING

Borrowing this year should be £11 billion less than forecast at £167 billion. This will mean that debt is £100 billion lower than was expected at last year’s Budget. The government will stick to planned levels of overall departmental spending in 2010-11 to help support the economy.

PUBLIC SECTOR PAY IMPLICATIONS

As we expected measures announced in the budget included:

• a new code of practice on setting pay for senior public sector workers, following the pay freeze for these workers in 2010-11. Whilst this is financially prudent, it may have challenges for us when it comes to competing for the best leaders and the recruitment and retention of them
• the government will seek a 1% cap on increases in public sector basic pay for 2011-12 and 2012-13. Again this may create some recruitment and retention issues
• halving spending on consultants, reducing the number of quangos and using online systems to provide information and advice to the public. The use of different communication channels to provide greater efficiency for tax payers makes sense. Employing consultants is not always necessarily bad, but this is an area that requires careful review

The government aim to make savings will be made by moving civil servants from more expensive London offices to other places around the country. In the long-term, the number of civil servants in London will be reduced by a third. Step one, 15,000 posts will be relocated within the next five years. I have some concern about whether this will actually be a false economy, as locating employment in London and the South East tends to have the best return on investment, given the general levels of economic vibrancy in that region - so we will have to see how this pans out.

In total, over £20 billion worth of savings have been identified to reduce borrowing and the government aims to protect front-line services. As we enter a period of significant public service retrenchment, it is axiomatic that front line services to our vulnerable citizens should be prioritised.

It would be great to get your thoughts on this week’s Budget. Leave a comment on this blog post or become a PPMA fan on Facebook and post a response there.

Have a great weekend!

Dean Shoesmith - PPMA President

Hello PPMA bloggers - this is my first post as the newly instated PPMA President.

I very much hope that those colleagues who were able to attend this year’s conference enjoyed it as much as I did - we will be asking for your views through a survey questionnaire to be issued in the next few working days.

The keynote speakers did a fantastic job delivering highly motivational speeches, as well as providing content that was professionally developing and thought-provoking. All speaker, master class and workshop presentation slides will be posted on the PPMA website in the near future.

We had a wide range of keynote speakers styles and were - quite literally - kick started by the evangelical Dr Dennis Kimbro from Atlanta Clark University, USA, who provided deep insight into leadership traits required to take us through this period of public sector retrenchment. The oratory power of Dr Kimbro was, I expect, a new experience for what was predominately a UK audience and launched the conference with a high energy, high impact, keynote presentation.

Our next keynote speaker was Professor Katie Truss who provided brand new research from Kingston University Business School into employee engagement. Her academic work was published in the US last week through Harvard Business review - quite some achievement for a UK academic.

Our second day opened with the tremendously energetic Beverly Alimo-Metcalfe from Bradford University. Beverly’s address was highly accessible, whilst packed with academic rigour. Beverly discussed the leadership correlation between competence and engagement - she convincingly argued that to be an effective leader you need both in copious supply and this will be essential for public sector services over the next decade.

The conference concluded with the sensational Richard Gerver - former educational advisor to Tony Blair’s government and a recipient of the head teacher of the year award.

Richard delivered a vision of hope for the future, where he challenged us to be more risk-confident if we are to take the necessary steps to innovate and create sustainable change in public sector services and to derive the best possible skill-level from our workforces. 

I concluded with a ‘call to arms’ for conference delegates to go back to their workplaces and identify skills shortages, then take up the challenge to address this need, that in turn will impact upon service delivery for the benefit of our local communities - as well as the country as a whole - as we strive to come out of recession and compete within the hyper-competitive global economy. I estimate that if every delegate accepted my challenge this could be to the collective benefit of 1/4 million public sector workers.

Dean Shoesmith - PPMA President

The following article features PPMA President Gill Hibberd:

1. Public Sector leaders back calls for pay transparency published 17th March 2010 on personneltoday.com

I had the pleasure of attending a CIPD Dinner with Jackie Orme this week on the issue of next generation HR leaders. A fascinating discussion took place about where the next leaders will be coming from and what role the CIPD will play in attracting and developing such talent. As well as our very own Stephen Moir, other people attending included Alex Wilson from BT, Stephen Dando from Thomson Reuters and Lucy Adams from the BBC.

Stephen and I were both supportive of the CIPD targeting fast track development at people entering the profession and in developing a high quality programme aimed at developing future leaders. The report from the CIPD on ‘Next Generation HR’ is certainly worth a read.

This week also saw the release of the long awaited Audit Commission report on CEO severance – ‘By Mutual Agreement’. The document is downloadable from the Audit Commission website and is a very interesting read. The trade press picked it up very quickly and I’ve been making comments that the recommendations on transparency are to be welcomed.

Finally, I’m now busy planning my conference itinerary for next week. I send my very best wishes to Dean for a successful event and given the tremendous energy and effort he has put into it I’m sure it will be a fantastic event.

For anyone out there who has been reading my blog please do come over and say hello if you are at the conference – I would love to meet you.

Gill

I’ve had a hectic week covering both Bucks CC work and PPMA work, so I’m relieved that the week is now over and I can go home to relax (with a glass of wine!).

On Tuesday, I attended a Solace/Alace seminar on the proposed changes to senior officers’ pensions taxation. The consultation paper on the changes makes radical proposals that will impact heavily on senior officers.

My suggestions for those who haven’t yet picked this up are to bring it to the attention of your senior team, suggest that anyone concerned obtains actuarial valuations of their pensions, arrange a seminar on the changes via your pensions administrator and if possible enable senior officers to get access to independent financial advice.

Last night I was lucky enough to attend the annual Association of County Chief Executives (ACCE) dinner in my capacity as President of PPMA. The dinner was held at The Grove (infamous for the leaked England Football Team tapes last week) which also happens to be a couple of miles from my home in Hertfordshire so also very convenient for me. It was a great networking event and I was able to speak to Rob Whiteman the incoming Chief Executive of the IDeA.

I have arranged to set up a meeting with him before he starts his new role in May to talk through PPMA priorities and how we work with the IDeA. I also saw Mike Burton from The MJ who tells me that the PPMA Focus is just about to go to the printers for the conference edition.

So, only 2 weeks to go before I hand over the reigns to Dean and counting down from here!

Have a great weekend.

Gill

The following article features PPMA President Gill Hibberd:

1. Brown Announces Senior Public-Sector Pay Freeze published 10th March 2010 on peoplemanagement.co.uk

The following article features PPMA President Gill Hibberd:

1. Wanted: Fast-Trackers published 25th February 2010 on peoplemanagement.co.uk