I was really excited when I started working for O2 in 2005. I’d just been offered the chance to be Assistant Manager of their latest store in Brighton. The store looked great, mobile phone shops often look really clinical and boring but this store was something different. O2 realised that it wasn’t all about the store design and gave me and the team some amazing training.
It helped me polish my selling skills and also helped me a lot personally. I gained more confidence in my own abilities. After a while, I found myself running the store. It was quite daunting to start with but I had lots of support from my team and my Area Manager and we were soon smashing all of our sales targets while still giving a great customer experience.
I then joined the Employee Forum at O2. It was my job to listen to people who worked in Retail stores and then represent their views at national meetings. I got to meet people from all across O2 including HR people, Technology people and Finance people. I really enjoyed the Employee Forum, it was great that O2 wanted to get people’s views on things like benefits, systems and contracts.
A few years on I now work in HR as part of the Employee Involvement & Experience team. It’s our job to make sure that people in O2 feel involved in what’s going on around them and also have a great experience. The team looks after the People Forum which is now stronger than ever. Groups of people from around O2 get to meet and talk about the issues which are really affecting them from the service in the canteen to our company car policy. Even Ronan (our CEO) goes to the national meetings to listen to what people are saying. I’m currently working on the annual “Reflect” survey at O2. We ask everyone at O2 to complete a survey to tell us what life is really like at O2. It’s a great way for everyone to be able to tell the company how they feel in a confidential way. The great thing about Reflect is that when the results are out, managers around the company use them to help build plans on how to improve life for O2 people over the next year.
We also get results from the Sunday Times award which help with these plans and of course, there’s always loads of feedback from the People Forum.I’m really proud of my own development at O2. I always thought I’d be a Retail person but now I’m getting involved in new things and learning new skills almost daily. It’s great to be part of a company and team which is so committed to listening to its people and then acting on what it hears.
Dan