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

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