Earlier this week the IDeA and PPMA ran a conference on the topical issue of organisational design, at the Hyatt Regency hotel in Birmingham. At the conference delegates heard from a number of organisations on the approaches they had taken to redesigning their organisations in a bid to create sustainable structure and efficiency savings.

The conference topic was obviously contemporary, as the event was sold out. Further events are now planned across the region and a follow-up online conference is being held. Further details can be found on the IDeA website.

Interviews with some of the key speakers were recorded at the event and in this first clip, Gillian Hibberd, describes the approach taken in Buckinghamshire County Council as part of their wider transformation programme.

Here are the other video interviews from the event.

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.

I’m back from a very restful break – to a mound of emails and papers! Hope that you are all enjoying the summer and are managing to find time to take a break yourselves at some point. With this in mind I am reminded of the wise words of Dave Ulrich at our conference earlier this year when he talked about us looking after our health and being responsible for our own well-being!

I’ve been catching up on news that I missed whilst away and see that the debate on public sector pay still rumbles on. The reality of the current economic climate has to hit home at some point and the need for pay restraint must surely apply as equally to the public sector as it does in the private sector. BA have taken the interesting stance of asking its workforce to volunteer to work for nothing for periods of a week to a month. Can you imagine the response that would be received in the public sector to similar suggestions? Personally I think it’s an innovative response to difficult times and we will all be challenged over the coming months to be more and more creative in the solutions we need to find to keep out organisations afloat.

My first opnion piece in People Management magazine on the issue of the bureaucracy we create in HR seems to have caused a stir! The week after it appeared a flurry of letters were received by People Management on the subject from various commentators – exactly the response I was hoping for. I know that not everyone will agree with my views but it’s always healthy to have a debate and to take on board the views of others.

My next piece will be on the issue of organisational design and should appear in the August edition of People Management.

One of the great jobs I get to do as PPMA President is to judge the overall winner of the Personnel Today Awards, which will be announced later in the year. The rather large judging file has just landed on my desk – watch out for more news on this later in the year!

I’m also putting together a plan for the next PPMA Board meeting which I hope will cover the big issues of the future of reward in the public sector as well as looking at the future world of work and what the challenges might be.

I will be back with more blogs soon, In the meantime enjoy what little sun we seem to be getting!

Gill

Hello everyone, I hope you have been enjoying the beautiful sunshine over the past few days. As I settle into the role of President and find time to plan ahead I Would like to share with you more detail on my manifesto for the next 12 months. There are five key areas I will be focusing on during my year as President which hopefully will touch a nerve or two in your roles:

1. Driving efficiencies out of our organisations, both in HR services and in other services. Shared services will be top of the agenda for most organisations. More and more innovative solutions to cross organisational partnerships functions will be sought as we all try to squeeze every drop of inefficiency out of back office processes in order to protect front line services.
2. Pay in the public sector. We have seen the public outcry in the media over ‘gold plated’ public sector pensions and ‘fat cat’ bonuses in the private sector.  The time has come to radically review reward in the public sector. The pension scheme is not sustainable in its current format, there are too many barriers in place for people to transfer seamlessly between the various public sector bodies and the national pay process doesn’t take sufficient account of local variations.
3. Shaping radical change to the structure and function of public services. Whether we like it or not our organisations need to change dramatically to meet the challenges that lie ahead. No longer will we be the only providers of public services in our areas. The shift to commissioning based organisations will continue, new delivery vehicles will develop as we look to drive public value and stronger partnership working will need to be top of our agendas as we try to join up even more of our services for the benefit of the customer. All this requires radical re-shaping of our organisations and radical re-training of our people.
4. Social Worker Recruitment – a very specific issue but well deserving of our attention. We have a duty to provide the highest levels of care and protection to our most vulnerable people. We have to find new solutions to the image of social work along with sustainable solutions to the attraction and retention of candidates.
5. Leadership development. There has never been a greater need for strong leadership in the public sector. The task ahead is significant and the only way that people will follow is by having a clear sense of what they are trying to achieve, a sense of excitement and confidence in the journey ahead of them and strong and confident role models at a senior level.

Finally, a very long blog post I know but can I also draw your attention to two new publications from PPMA. The first is on the Organisational Development Implications of the Shared Services Agenda, produced by Richard Crouch and Rita Sammons from Solace Enterprises. The second is a thought leadership paper on The Future Size and Shape of our Organisations written by Deloitte in conjunction with PPMA. Both are available to PPMA members for download from the PPMA website.

In the meantime watch out for a special focus on outsourcing in this weeks Sunday Times with contributions from PPMA and for editorial coverage in the LGC this week on pay.

Bye for now

Gill

Well the time finally came last week for me to take over the reigns as President of PPMA from Stephen Moir. In my acceptance at the AGM I said how surreal the moment was as I had sat in the audience at PPMA Conferences more times than I care to remember never thinking that one day I would be wearing the chain of office!

It’s going to be a very hard act to follow the outstanding year that Stephen has had but we have a great team at PPMA and we will all work hard to make sure that this year is equally successful as last.

I took a bit of a gamble in moving our flagship conference to Manchester but I have to say I think it paid off. The theme for the conference was Purpose, Passion and Performance. All the speakers focussed on what that meant and were able to bring invaluable thoughts, ideas and debate to the bumper size audience. For those of you who were not able to attend, the speakers slides will be available for download form the PPMA website later this week. On the front page of the conference section you will also see a downloadable version of my opening address at the conference.

Copies of pictures from a very entertaining Thursday night can also be downloaded from www.prazzi.com/ppma2009  

I also set out my manifesto for the year at the AGM and this is something that I will be focussing hard on over the next twelve months. The five key areas of focus are:

• The efficiency agenda
• The changing size and shape of our organisations (see the PPMA/Deloitte thought leadership booklet on this topic that was distributed at the conference)
• The future of public sector reward and pensions
• The crisis in social worker recruitment
• Leadership of our organisations  

Watch out for more news on these issues throughout the year.

Finally, I also had the pleasure of meeting some wonderful people from PPMA, our sponsor organisations and partner organisations from across the globe during conference week. I was a pleasure to meet you all and thank you for your support at the conference. It is certainly a week I will remember for a long, long time to come.

Gill

Well, who would have believed that 12 months could go so quickly? I’m still a bit surprised that the PPMA conference is almost here again. As I write this post, I’m already in Manchester at the conference venue, with the team of people that are helping to get everything ready for the days ahead.

The conference run up has once again seen PPMA in the media including our incoming President giving some hard but necessary truths about public sector employment, especially in a time of recession, in People Management last week. I also wrote my last H R Columnist piece in the same edition of PM. I’m also sure the media profile for PPMA will again go through the roof this week as the conference gets into full swing (the cast of speakers alone merits this).

So, that’s really it. My Presidency comes to an end tomorrow at the AGM and all that remains is for me to thank you, the PPMA members, who gave me this wonderful opportunity. It has been my distinct privilege and pleasure to serve as President for 2008/09 and I look forward to continuing to serve as both Past President and Treasurer for the next 12 months.

In case you wanted to ask the killer question has the last year been worth it? The answer is a resounding yes from me, the real test is whether or not you, as the Association, also think my tenure has been worthwhile - I hope you equally agree.

Anyway, I look forward to seeing you in Manchester later this week - Gillian, over to you and best of luck.

Best wishes and thanks to all,

Stephen

Hi all

Sorry for not having updated the Blog for a while, my new job is keeping me pretty busy.

Anyway, a few things for information:

1. We are now only 12 days away from the PPMA Conference in Manchester - have you booked your place yet?

2. I’ve been busy beavering away updating the PPMA Constitution in the last few weeks (someone needed to do it). This will be ready for the AGM for Members to consider and hopefully approve.

3. I’ve got my final HR Columnist piece for People Management being published on April 23rd, which provides me with an opportunity to reflect upon some of the issues facing the HR profession for the future. I’m delighted to say that our President (Designate), Gillian Hibberd, will be picking up this Column in the future, keeping the PPMA name in lights for the coming year.

And finally,

4. I’m delighted to say that Communications Management, PPMA’s Communications and PR agency, has been presented with a Gold Award for its employment practices in this year’s survey of the “Best Places to Work in PR” Obviously we are highly delighted - especially as only 2 out of the 120 PR consultancies who submitted entries to the Best Places to Work survey received a Gold medal and only 12 in total received a medal of any description. It’s great to know that one of our key professional advisers is also being recognised as a great employer!

I’ll be doing my last Blog Post next week and will then be handing this over to Gillian’s capable hands as well.

Best wishes

Stephen