Conference Programme Outline 2009

WEDNESDAY 29 APRIL

9:00 – 10:00 am

Enjoy leisure facilities at the hotel.

10:00 – 10:45 am

PPMA Annual General Meeting

11:00 – 11:30 am

President’s opening comments

11:30 – 12:30 pm

Masterclass: Developing Leadership Strategies

Speakers: Angela O’Connor National Policing Improvement Agency/Cathy Butterworth Greater Manchester Police

Solutions Workshop
People Management’s Contribution to the Place Shaping Agenda

The Leadership Centre has work under way in many parts of England to help leaders across the whole public sector collaborate to deliver more and better services for less cost and to engage local people more fully in the future of their place.  The size of the potential prize is colossal:  the financial element is measured in £billions in a typical city or county.  Part of this agenda is technical, legal and operational but the bigger part is about the behaviour, relationships and skills of people.  This means that the prize cannot be grasped without the deep and sustained involvement of HR and OD professionals.  This workshop will unpack what that involvement is and what they need to do.

Speaker: Stephen Taylor, The Leadership Centre for Local Government

Skills Workshop: Charismatic People Management

We would all like to be more influential. Being able to influence other people is a key business skill, whether it is in one-on-one negotiations, or addressing an audience of hundreds. But it is easy to conclude that some people have charisma and others don't. Right? Wrong! Charisma is merely behaviour. And behaviour can be taught.

Speaker: Catherine Doherty, Fields of Learning

12:30 – 2:00 pm

LUNCH and Exhibition

2:00 – 3:00 pm

Keynote Session: Achieving your organisation’s strategic ambitions in a fast changing world

Are you confident that:

• Your organisation will achieve  its strategic ambitions  in a fast moving and unpredictable world?
•  You can sustain or develop a vibrant, successful organisation, ‘fit for the future’?

Dr L Mee-Yan Cheung-Judge, the UK’s leading Organisational Development practitioner, who supported Greg Dyke in changing the BBC, will present a session covering:

• Creating sustainable and effective transformational change
• Igniting imagination and passion, generating the right psychological climate
•  Mobilising and sustaining energy, growing a community of change advocates
•  Using  a whole systems approach, addressing the key underlying issues that determine an organisation’s success

Speaker: Dr L Mee-Yan Cheung-Judge, Director of Quality and Equality Ltd

3:00 – 3:45 pm

BREAK

3:45 – 5:00 pm

Masterclass : Delivering Strategy by Bringing Values to Life

The session will tell the story of Birmingham’s BEST programme to highlight the nature, scale, timescale and lessons from such a major engagement programme.  Session participants will come away with an understanding of the structure of the programme and how it is being evaluated and will have had a chance to use one of the core workshop exercise tools.  The session will share what we discovered about raising, developing and sustaining energy for change over the long term.

Speakers: John Bruce Jones, Stanton Marris and Richard Billingham and Raffaela Goodby of Birmingham City Council

Solutions Workshop : Creativity and Innovation using De Bono’s 6 Thinking Hats

This participative workshop will demonstrate that creativity is not just a question of natural ability – it is a skill which can be taught, learned and developed.  Six Thinking Hats® “Parallel Thinking” ensures that new ideas are assessed objectively, comprehensively and quickly.  Six Hats will deliver a radical breakthrough in meeting productivity and effectiveness and also transform inclusion, partnership working and employee involvement.
 This workshop will enable you to identify how you can use these techniques to tap into the true potential of every employee and team.

Speaker: Russell Chalmers, Holst Group

Skills Workshop : Techniques for Developing Mental Toughness / Mental Resilience

Speaker: To be confirmed

7:15 pm

Drinks reception

8:00 pm

Annual Dinner and PPMA HR Awards

10:00 pm

After Dinner Entertainment

 THURSDAY 30 APRIL

9:00 am

Exhibition opens

9:30 am – 12:00

Key note workshop: World Class People Management
Great people management should drive what organisations can achieve and be at the heart of how, and what, an organisation delivers. World class HR seeks out the high performance gene in organisations. It looks for the best return on investment from its people by ensuring they’re the right talent in the right role, and sufficiently engaged to deliver nothing but results.  This session will explore how people management practitioners operating at the top of their game can make a real difference to their organisation.

Speaker: Dave Ulrich

12:00 pm

LUNCH and Exhibition

1.00 – 2:15 pm

Masterclass : ServiceTransformation - the Shared Services Phenomenon

In this session you will hear about Southwest One Ltd, one of the biggest ever back office function outsourcing projects involving local councils  and the police. This was  an innovative partnership deal with IBM to transform not only back office services, but also to generate whole organisational change.

This session will tell the Somerset story for change and the impact that this is having on both customers and the workforce. The ‘deal’ involved the use of the ‘Retention of Employment’ model to transfer staff, as used by the NHS and will explore what this means in practice from both an organisational and HR perspective.

Speakers : Richard Crouch, Head of HR and OD, Somerset CC and Paul Lyons, Director of Service Operations, Southwest One Ltd.

Solutions Workshop : The Way we Work

All organisations are facing the challenge of turning themselves into true 21st century performers using last century ways of working .The conundrum is recognised by most people  but the task is challenging ,touching on the need for leadership, staff engagement ,changes to the way things are done ,investment to save and a whole package of measures to make it all happen .

In this session there will be a chance to learn about the journey taken by Hertfordshire County Council resulting in a £3.8 m annual saving, reducing the office footprint by moving from 51 offices to 3 , getting rid of 13 kilometres of shelving , having individual discussions with 4500 staff, introducing a plug and go approach to technology, having widespread flexible working ,having 2 workstations for every three members of staff,no disputes with the staff and no redundancies.

Speakers: David Robinson and Louise Harrington, Hertfordshire CC

Skills Workshop: Communicating with Confidence and Impact

Have you ever noticed that you can communicate fluently with some people, but with others your message just doesn’t seem to get across?

We need to be able to communicate with all types of people to get the job done – one to one, in the Boardroom and in larger gatherings.  As the pace of change increases, we need to connect with people quickly and effectively – there’s rarely the opportunity to make our case twice.  

This workshop is about understanding our impact when we speak, the way we filter what we listen to, and how to develop a new approach to communicating.

We’ll hear some useful ideas, have fun with some exercises, and take away some tools and techniques that you can use immediately.

Speaker: Claire Jones, Inspiria Consulting

2:15 pm – 3:30 pm

Masterclass : Developing a World Class Healthcare Organisation

Heart of England NHS Foundation Trust is one of the largest in England. It includes Birmingham Heartlands Hospital, Solihull Hospital, Good Hope Hospital and Birmingham Chest Clinic. The Trust is one of the highest performing in the UK, voted Acute Trust of the Year in the 2006 Health Service Journal Awards and in the Nursing Times' Top 10 Places to Work in 2005 and won the HR Magazine Award for Change Management in 2008.In this session you will hear how the Trust are turning their vision of developing a world class organisation into reality, and achieving impressive results, through its moving forward together programme.

Speakers: Mandy Coalter, Director of HR and OD, & Mark Goldman, Chief Executive of Heart of England NHS Trust

Solutions Workshop : World Class People Management Toolkit

To keep pace with the changing needs of organisations, HR must respond with a range of adaptive tools that can be used to drive the performance of teams. In this session delegates will be invited to experience three vital tools designed to get teams and managers energised, communicating and producing better results.

Speakers: Shaun Lincoln, Associate Director, Leadership and Management, Learning and Skills Network (LSN) and John Stone, Chief Executive, The Learning and Skills Network (LSN)

Skills Workshop : Next Generation Web Skills for People Managers

A recent CIPD research report, co-authored by Martin Reddington, has drawn attention to the relationship between new, emergent technologies - often called Web 2.0 or Enterprise 2.0 – and the management of people. In doing so it deals with the potential opportunities and challenges presented by these technologies and how HR can play a useful role in guiding their adoption, to support business performance. The Skills Workshop will examine the new technologies and provide information on their relative merits, together with the consequences for HR policy. Some ‘hands on’ experience will be available.

Speaker: Martin Reddington, Director of Martin Reddington Associates and Expert Advisor to the PPMA HR Transformation Network.

3:30 pm

BREAK

4:00 pm

World Class People Management - Steering Organisations Through Downturn.

One of the few certainties in life is that organisations inevitably go through cycles of growth and downturns. Unfortunately, the consequences of not discussing or preparing for downturns might mean that the disruption to the organisation will be that much worse. This inevitability means that there are few downsides to developing a downturn plan, even if it ends up sitting on the shelf for a while. Just like death and taxes, it's always a wise idea to have a plan in place so that People Management Specialists can minimise negative impacts, not to mention come across as effective, forward-looking, and strategic.

Come along to this session and hear about how Oracle have prepared for the economic downturn and the essential components of any downturn plan.

Speaker: Vance Kearney, Oracle

5:00 pm

Free time

7:15 pm

Drinks Reception – opportunity for sponsors to greet guests

8:00 pm

Gala Dinner

9.30 pm

PPMA Recruitment Advertising Awards to be introduced by celebrity guest

11:00 pm

Entertainment – Disco

 FRIDAY 1 MAY

9:30 am

Masterclass:  Employment Law Update for People Managers

Speaker: Stuart Chamberlain,  Croner

10.30 am

Keynote Session: Leadership Skills for People Managers

Speaker: Simon Constance, Orion Partnership

11.30 am

Keynote session:  World Class People Management – what the future holds

Speaker: Jackie Orme, CIPD

12:30 pm

President’s closing remarks

12:45 pm

Conference closes