This presentation is from the Public Sector Show, held in London on the 27th June 2017. It was on Workforce transformation and was chaired by PPMA VP Karen Grave

1. Public Sector Show –
ExCeL London
PPMA Open Theatres
June 27th 2017
Chaired by Karen Grave – Vice-President
PPMA

2. CONTENTS
About PPMA
Case study 2: Workforce transformation – How do you build
a 21st century workforce?

3. About PPMA (1/3)
The Public Services People Managers
Association (PPMA) is the first choice
association for people professionals in
public services.
We provide an unrivalled community of
specialist professionals who support each
other.
The who:
• Membership comes from Local Government,
Central Government, Blue Light, 3rd Sector and
consultants
• Our community is highly qualified, passionate,
committed and diverse public services HR and
OD community.
• We play a critical role in influencing key
decision-makers and stakeholders involved in
people management and workforce issues.
The what:
• We focus our efforts on ensuring that
workforce issues are at the forefront of the
debate about the future content and shape
of public services and particularly the HR &
OD support required to support them.
• With key partners, we sponsor and support
a number of programmes which develop HR
professionals at various stages of their
career; and we deliver National and
Regional events. We also deliver an Annual
PPMA Excellence in People Management
Awards programme and run a highly
successful annual conference.
• We lobby relevant bodies on behalf of our
members and influence thinking and
decision making on key issues affecting the
organisations we work with and within.

4. About PPMA (2/3)
We offer our members, employers and
partners a compelling value proposition
We offer competitive membership pricing
Insight - Relationships – Career Enhancement
Reach – Community - Influence
Influence – Knowledge - Community
We offer our
Members
Our partners
obtain
Our employers
benefit from
Level Description Pricing*
Districts and
Boroughs
For Two-Tier authorities and
Borough Councils
£60 pa
County
councils/unitary
authorities/
metropolitan
boroughs
Includes authorities in
Northern Ireland
First
members
(full) £100 pa
Then £75 pa
per individual
Blue Light and
Central
Government
Includes 3rd sector
organisations
£60pa
Non HR
practitioner
For all non HR/OD
professionals, but senior
leaders with workforce
leadership responsibilities,
e.g., Director pf Adult
Services
£60pa

5. About PPMA (3/3)
We have an ambitious business plan but
that is underpinned by our core values.
Our business plan has 4 core themes.
Our brand values set out the behaviours
that we believe will best help us deliver our
Business Plan objectives.
We reinforce these in all work that we do in
advancing our vision:
Listening
Talking
Promoting
Disrupting
Influencing
Sharing
Developing

6. Workforce transformation –21st Century Workforces
Delighted to introduce Neil
Keeler, Group Manager
People & OD, Southend on
Sea Borough Council
Southend-on-Sea won both the
'Transforming the Working
Environment' and 'Sustainable
Transformation' prizes at this
year's PPMA Awards.
Scope of our session:
• Transforming the workforce – The
Southend Way
• 21st Century Public Servant research
• A look at Walk Tall - the eBook created in
collaboration between the PPMA,
Solace, the Local Government
Association and the University of
Birmingham
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7. Southend background
 Southend achieved LGC Council of the Year in 2012 (an extremely
rewarding outcome from the first 2006 ‘Inspiring’ culture change
programme)
 Local Government association peer reviewers left Southend reflecting on
‘the most impressive employee engagement’ they had seen ‘in over 25
years in local government’.
 ‘In awe of the breath taking culture’ they found here at Southend Borough
Council this presentation explains how that transformative working culture
was created
 Two OD programmes were responsible:
 ‘At risk of failing’ in 2006 – the only way was up!
 Council of the year 2012 - the pinnacle of success – now what?
 Beginning again, this time from success – we still started by listening.
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8. The new programme
 Our 2nd programme encouraged 2,700 suggestions from our
people, focused within 5 areas, to help us improve further:
 Behaviours
 Capability
 Leadership
 Shared Purpose
 Values
 Engagement with our 2nd programme was overwhelming
 We used Change Instigators to support the programme
 These volunteer ‘change champions’ were used with great
effect in the first OD programme
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9. Change champions
 They acted as ‘narrators’ and ‘story tellers’. Credibly explaining the
‘heritage’ of the programmes and maintaining the continuity of our
story, they were integral to culture change succeeding, as
ambassadors, critical friends and in testing ideas
 Operational people, from ‘front-line’ and ‘back office’ roles, often
not in management roles, they demonstrated leadership.
 Their integrity, authenticity and passion for improvement defeated
accusations of ‘this is just an HR initiative’ or ‘this programme
won’t actually change anything’.
 They sieved through the thousands of suggestions, identified work
streams, goals and interventions to move performance forward,
again.
 Obtaining political and senior leadership support was critical,
especially in a time of deep budget pressures
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10. The Southend Way
 Three key culture change
themes emerged,
embodying aims critical to
our ongoing success:
 Resilience and Growth
 Engaging Leadership
 Focused Performance
 These themes and
supporting workstreams
became the Southend Way
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11. Resilience and growth
 Ensuring our people were engaged, strong, flexible and ‘developed/grew’ at
a rate greater than that of the change, was critical:
 Take Time To Think – stopping ‘the hamster wheel’ to reflect and review. Access our award
winning coaching programme or new action learning groups. Workshops on Systems
thinking, the 21st Century Public Servant and external speakers the MD of the Metro
Bank talking to us about ‘creating fans not customers’ were used as provocateurs
 Your talent, our performance – the workforce development cycle and how performance
management supported individual’s development were reviewed. A new learning
management system is being with new systems to monitor and support L&D
 Be more business-like – Supporting services to reduce costs (£56m 2011-15 in the context
of a £124m revenue budget), also improving income becoming more entrepreneurial
 Productive, healthy working lives – Introducing a new resilience programme using a
holistic resilience profiling tool showed our commitment. Public health colleagues
contributed with Mindful Employer status adopted – staying healthy both physically and
mentally was critical
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12. Engaging Leadership
 Engaging Leadership had been critical to previous successes. A new
leadership development programme using a 360 feedback tool
challenged leaders again
 ‘Downsizing’ risked devastating our employee engagement, four critical
workstreams sought to ensure that didn’t happen:
 Courageous conversations – leaders would need to challenge previous
practice, addressing the ‘elephants in the room’ addressing difficult issues
 Change & transition – courageous conversations would focus on change, and
critically supporting transition – ensuring our people successfully adapted
and managing the impact it would have on them were priorities for leaders
 Coaching, feedback & recognition – leaders needed to develop and grow our
people, coaching higher performance in a developmental way
 Solutions, innovation and creativity – enabling our people would to create
innovative solutions to not only maintain our services, but improve them
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13. Focused performance
 The final theme needed to wed changing business strategy, to our
people. informing what needed to be different and how. Arguably this
was the most challenging theme. It needed to encourage:
 Clarity & consensus on our priorities – SBC was re-aligning reduced
resources whilst ensuring those in greatest need were supported. A new
conversation with our community titled ‘Our town our future’ started
identifying key outcomes for the
 More targeted & effective in our outcomes – Every service or relationship
has been reviewed, ensuring our focus is impact/outcome not procedure.
Coaching to outcomes was key - not the process and bureaucracy on the
way!
 Collaborating, negotiating & improving partnerships – Partners were
involved extensively in both programmes
 Stopping non-priority activity – SBC like all other UK councils is pressured to
stop some services. Innovative practice, increasing income, wider use of
volunteers and closer partnership working have all been used to minimise
service closures
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14. Values were embedded in performance
 Identified in our first culture change
programme, our values were
reviewed in 2011 and firmly re-
confirmed as relevant
 Programmes promoting ‘Doing the
right thing’ and team ‘Values’
workshops were introduced
 Acting as ‘a safety valve’ to the
emerging risks that occur in a much
busier yet downsizing organisation,
they ensured how we worked was
sustainable and our behaviours
were the ‘right’ ones
 Our people repeatedly expressed
that if in changing the council, we
left behind our values and
everything they represented, then
we would have not succeeded
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15. So what? Our outcomes…
Our 2015 LGA independent and external Peer group review noted the following:
 “The Council has a track record for achieving – it has a ‘can do’ attitude”
 “Enduring and purposeful senior management leadership – winning MJ Senior Leadership Team of the year
2016”
 “Successfully managed £66m of reductions (from 2011/12 to date) with minimal negative impact on services”
 “Managed a complex political administration offering stability through change”
 “Delivered critical service improvements e.g. new waste contract saving £22m over 15 years and achieving
improved outcomes”
 “Some truly amazing achievements through effective partnerships – University & college The Forum, Stobarts
and the Airport, local businesses and the Hive etc.”
 “Creating a clean and prosperous Southend: Hive, Cliffs Pavilion, Chalkwell Park, Cycle network, Garrison
development, railway stations, improved road network, forming our own energy company.”
 “Investors in People Gold achieved in 2015.”
 We launched our own L&D venue in 2011, as other authorities were cutting L&D we invested in ours.
 SBC formed a new partnership with the Pre-School Learning Alliance successfully attracting £40m (from the Big
Lottery Fund) over the next 10 years.
 Works commenced on our £210m Airport Business Park creating over 7,000 new jobs and transform the
surrounding highways and infrastructure over the next few years.
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16.  Background
 The why and how
 Being a 21st Century Public Servant
 Walk Tall Launch
 What is happening around the country
 What could we and should we do next?
 Next steps
21st Century Public Servant Introduction
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17. The Research: “Cui servire est regnare” To serve is to rule
The Premise
The sponsors
The research team
The outputs
- The future of work is changing
- Further Public Sector integration
presents huge challengers
- We need to understand what the
21st Century Public Servant looks
like
- Dr Catherine Needham (University
of Birmingham)
- Dr Catherin Mangan (University of
Birmingham)
- Supported by:
- Interviewees, survey
responders, bloggers
- ESRC (Knowledge Exchange Project
with Birmingham City Council)
- Public Services Academy
- Identified 8 key roles
- 10 key characteristics
- These are portable across different
public service organisations
- …..and Third sector
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18. Walk Tall: Being a 21st Century Public Servant
 Steering Group established
 Over 60 people interviewed for the
book
 Participants from LG, Blue Light,
Health and Voluntary Sector
 Used storytelling as the technique
to describe the characteristics in
action already
 eStorybook Launched in July 2016
 To date over 3,500 hits on the LGA
and PPMA website
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19.  The 21st Century Public Servant:
 Is loyal to their locality
 Works with citizens as equals
 Has a public service ethos as well as commercial awareness
 Has generic as well as professional skills
 Builds a career across sectors and services
 Reflects on practice and learns from others
 Thinks creatively about ongoing austerity
 Takes the initiative, acts as a municipal entrepreneur
 Embraces distributed and collaborative leadership
 Needs flexible, supportive organisations.
The characteristics
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20.  Following the launch of the book, we developed a summary Vodcast
 It gives a great overview of the work we have done so far
Walk Tall …..the Vodcast
Please double click
on the icon to
activate the video
and then click the
play key
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21. Why does this work matter?
 It represents the most current thinking in the field AND it is applicable
across all of public service
 Walk Tall can be used:
 Holistically for those organisations looking at whole scale workforce
transformation
 To enable people development activities, e.g., leadership and management
approaches
 To help address some of our most pressing challenges:
 It is absolutely applicable across Health
21st
Century
Workforce
New Pay
Structure
NLGN New
Deal
Ongoing
funding
challenges
Integra
tion
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22.  A range of activity is underway:
 Some is cross council
 Other is very specific
 Some examples
 21st Century Employer assessment tool
 Leadership survey
 360 degree management tool
 Leadership development
 We are also making sure that we are publicising the sister research: 21st
Century Councillor and thinking about how that can sit alongside 21st
Century Public Servant
 Looking at how 21st Century Councillor will apply in other public sector
governance settings
We are already applying 21st Century Public Servant in practice…..
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23.  We are working on a 21st Century Workforce ‘accreditation’
programme…..
 And continuing to spread the word amongst the broader public sector
 We are also applying 21st Century in the LGA New Graduate
Development education programme
 We are also using it as the basis for some of our lobbying responses
and partnership working with other bodies
Next steps and questions
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