As I mentioned in my recent blog post, the president of IPMA-HR Joe Lunt indulged me by agreeing to a 16-minute video interview where I asked questions of Transatlantic comparison and contrast - check out the video interview below.

Dean Shoesmith (PPMA) Interviews Joe Lunt (IPMA-HR) from PPMA on Vimeo.

…and remember, if you’ve any feedback on the interview, please do leave a comment on this blog post.

Dean

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

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

The sun is shining, I’m sat on the train from London to Cambridge and I’ve chaired my final PPMA Policy Board as President.

The meeting today was really well attended and supported by Regional Chairs and Lead Officers and gave the Board a chance to review the annual report submissions for the forthcoming AGM at the conference.

Reflecting upon my time as President, I had the chance to thank all the people that have supported and enabled me to do this - you know who you are!  Best of all, I get to attend the Conference this year as a Delegate and will enjoy what will be the best PPMA Conference yet and learn, from the best, including David Ulrich himself.

The Policy Board also debated key issues relating to Local Government Pay and Senior Salaries/FOI issues and it felt that some key policy positions were arrived at.

I look forward to seeing you in Manchester at the end of April, at which point this Blog will become Gillian’s to lead as well…I hope you have booked your places at the conference!?

Best wishes

Stephen

Well, that time has come around again - within a matter of days it will be Christmas and then we’ll commence 2009. 2008 has a good year for the PPMA and the members of the Association, the PPMA Office and the Policy Board have once again worked tirelessly to improve the standard of people management and development across public services.

PPMA’s stock is riding high (at least in my mind) and it’s probably time to take a well-earned break for us all - I’ll be back to the blog again on 2nd January.

On that basis, please accept my very best wishes for Christmas and for a happy, healthy and peaceful New Year.

Stephen

For once, I’m writing a blog update whilst sat working from home - what a pleasant novelty! 

Even more surprising is that this week there isn’t a huge amount to report on the PPMA front. Last week’s attendance at the Personnel Today Awards was hugely successful and the PPMA guests appeared to have enjoyed themselves, as did the PPMA members in attendance. I was delighted to see that there were a number of public sector finalists, including my former colleagues in South Tyneside - well done to all the public sector entrants who made it to the final stages and especially to those who won!

Other than updating on the tail end of last week, from a personal perspective PPMA business appears to be winding down towards the Christmas break - but I’m pretty sure that it will quickly ramp up again in the New Year. The one bit of business to highlight was a discussion I held this morning with our lead on Pay and Reward, Jim Savege, and Andy Cook from Marshall-James HR consulting. Our discussion was about employee relations training for HR teams and we agreed an outline proposal that I’ll be writing to PPMA Regional Chairs about to consider further.

Before closing for this week, I would like to make a personal comment about the national press and what appears to be an increasing anti-public sector line.  Newspaper articles have covered all sorts of issues from public sector pay and pensions to job titles - if I didn’t know better, I’d say that a general election was impending (you can call me a cynic at this point). When messages such as these start to appear in the broadsheets, it’s pretty clear that lobby groups and political parties are starting to flex their campaigning muscles.

Compound this with the additional public sector efficiency targets and increases in employer national insurance contributions, etc. then public servants and public sector employers are very much under the spotlight, especially our colleagues working in children’s services across the country.  With the backdrop of the credit crunch and interest rates at a 57 year low, this is not only going to be a tough time for HR teams supporting employers and employees alike, it’s unlikely to get any easier in the meantime. So, rather than crumble or hide away, HR really has to step up the pace and help the public sector as a whole weather the gathering storm.

Best wishes

Stephen