Dean Shoesmith, executive head of HR at the London Boroughs of Sutton and Merton, will take over as president of the Public Sector People Managers’ Association (PPMA) from today (Monday, 22 March).

The PPMA represents over 1,000 HR and organisational development professionals in the public sector. Shoesmith’s presidency will be announced at the PPMA’s annual conference this week. Shoesmith takes over from Gillian Hibberd, while Anne Gibson becomes the new vice-president.

Shoesmith said: “My year as president of the PPMA will focus on addressing the skills gap and on seeking out examples of the very best practice in the areas of training and development – particularly for those who don’t possess basic literacy, numeracy and ICT skills. I believe there has never been a more important time to address the skills gap; if we don’t win the skills race, we will fall back within the global economy - which will have considerable societal ramifications.

“There are swathes of working UK adults who have suffered educational disadvantage – both through being by-passed by the education system, but then their personal isolation and exclusion has been compounded by organisational failure to address their development in the workplace,” he added.

(See Recruiter, 17 March 2010.)

As executive head of HR at the London Boroughs of Sutton and Merton, Shoesmith leads the shared human resources team across the two organisations and their 11,000 combined employees.