The CIPD, the professional body for HR and people development, Health People Managers Association (HPMA), Public Services People Managers Association (PPMA) and Universities HR (UHR) are pleased to announce the renewal of their Memorandum of Understanding (MoU).

The partnership reaffirms each organisation’s commitment to working together to create a strong, diverse and high-performing people profession that can support the nearly six million people employed in public service organisations.

Thousands of dedicated people professionals have already benefited from the collective efforts of these four membership associations during their partnership to date.

The renewed partnership will extend their joint efforts in:

• Advocating for important workforce issues
• Collaborating to enhance talent development, workforce solutions, and service delivery
• Facilitating networking and knowledge-sharing at regional events
• Supporting each other's conferences, content, and research programmes
• Addressing public policy consultations and media issues with a unified public service stance.

The partnership is set to last until April 2028 and will continue to positively shape the future of the people profession.

Peter Cheese, Chief Executive of the CIPD, the professional body for HR and people development, said:

“Public service professionals have faced unprecedented challenges in recent times, with ongoing economic and political uncertainties and social change. In this context, people professionals have played a vital role in supporting people and organisations, enabling better work and working lives and outcomes. The role of our organisations together is to support the people profession, helping them to develop the skills and capabilities needed, to share knowledge and learning across our networks, and build the confidence to shape the future.”

Gordon McFarlane, President of PPMA, said:

“I’m delighted that the PPMA will be continuing to work in partnership with the CIPD, HPMA and UHR. We have had a number of successful joint webinars and events over the last few years, and we’re actively exploring ways that through working together, we can add value to the HR profession through networking, developing talent as well as further joint events.”

Helen Scott, Executive Director of UHR, said:

“Reflecting over the period of collaboration to this point, we can’t help but remember that the pandemic brought a sense of crisis to public services and a testing of every process, including our people-based ones. Having this group of fellow practitioners to work with, during bad times and good, can only strengthen our solutions as we work together on shared problems. This collaborative learning adds significantly to us all and gives us additional confidence that we can face the cross-sector challenges of today and indeed tomorrow – career development and talent pipelines, AI and more - with broad-based and well-developed learning that facilitates transfer between the sectors."

Nicky Ingham, Chief Executive of the HPMA, said:

“The HPMA team and I are so thrilled to be continuing our partnership with CIPD, UHR, and PPMA. This collaboration has supported the evidence-based practice for all our members across the organisations and raised the profile of public service as an employer of choice and for our people profession. We have achieved a sharing of knowledge, experience, and practice which supports collaboration across the system, and I cannot wait to see what we can achieve in the future.”