On the 13th June 2017, Jobsgopublic held our incredibly successful ‘Let’s Talk Digital’ event in partnership with the PPMA. In a recent blog, PPMA East Midlands Chair and Head of People Management at Lincolnshire County Council Fiona Thompson looked back on some highlights of the day.

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Hello PPMA members and friends,

Fiona Thompson, Head of People Management at Lincolnshire County Council and PPMA East Midlands Regional Chair, writes our blog post this week. Along with colleagues from PPMA West Midlands and PPMA Platinum Sponsors, Jobsgopublic, she recently organised and hosted  a ‘Let’s Talk Digital’ event. Held on 13th June 2017 at Donnington Park, Leicestershire, it was a huge success and below she shares some highlights from the day.

“The event was attended by HR and OD professionals as well as IT leads from local authorities, Fire authorities and a number of NHS organisations. PPMA was delighted to see NHS colleagues and we look forward to them attending more PPMA events in future. The discussion at the event and the evaluation feedback we have received shows what a hot topic this is for many organisations.

Neill Crump – Director of Digital and Customer Services from Worcestershire Council delivered the main session. Neill is an inspiring Digital leader and he shared a number of examples of transformation projects. His presentation was highly thought provoking and represent a great opportunity to learn from an organisation using agile methodology to deliver Digital but also enable culture change.

Neill’s view, which PPMA shares is that a prerequisite for the public sector to improve customer services, whilst minimising costs is not just about good technical investment, but importantly a leadership culture which is open minded, brave and performance focussed.

This session was followed by a presentation from Jobs Go Public sharing their research on recruitment trends in the public and charity sectors. This was another thought provoking session providing real insight into how to successfully use social media strategies to influence successful recruitment. Employer branding; the use of data through media tracking and google analytics to provide intelligence is critical to running effective recruitment campaigns.

Chair of the East Midlands PPMA, Fiona Thompson said” there is significant interest in the PPMA arranging further events building on this one including:

• smarter working; flexible/mobile working;
• digital expertise and skills development;
• sharing ‘quick wins’ and sharing good news achievements with attendees on any digital transformation and service change initiatives;
• Channel shift (internal and external). Digital across other key HR processes not just recruitment.
• horizon scanning – ‘what does the future hold.’”

PPMA Vice President – Karen Grave, who attended the event, added that she “would like to see this as the first of a series of events that build upon this one which focuses on the wider culture change and strategic partnership working between local authorities and between local authorities and the NHS organisations. Working together across and within organisation boundaries is really key to us delivering changes that will improve the effectiveness of services to our citizens”.

PPMA is really excited about the positive feedback from event delegates. As a result, will be running this successful Let’s Talk Digital event in other regions – please keep an eye on future announcements.”