Blog

The time has come round again for me to contemplate what I’ve been up to and what I’ve learned.
The Think Big Residential  I did at Avon Tyrell comes to my mind immediately. I was asked to do a master class on Leadership and Motivation for 18 young people who were on the 3 day residential to get support for their various projects aimed at young people in their communities. Feedback for days like this usually include the word “inspiration” in a bit of a clichéd manner, but for the first time in my life I want to use the word inspiration in it’s true sense. I think they did listen to my presentation and I hope I imparted a little of my knowledge about how us athletes keep motivated, and work in teams. But I felt that the most valuable time was when I talked individually with the young people and we discussed their projects. I think I was meant to be inspiring them with my experience of trying to seek sponsorship, maintain a balanced lifestyle, look to people for help , and so on ,  but I certainly left feeling – and I’ve tried to think of alternative word – inspired.
Hearing about how some of them left paid jobs, spent their half terms at the residential, and have such huge visions for the future, left me aghast at how young, how wise and how driven they are. And they are driven to get more participants and funding, but their emphasis was on ensuring that the people involved got the best experience possible.  We decided that motivated and enthusiastic people already involved in the projects will inevitably result in increased participation within their communities – not unlike o2’s Fandom.
As an athlete, people expect that you have inspirational sports people that you look up to and aim to be. I’ve never had that because I can understand why they’ve dedicated themselves and trained so hard to get to where they’ve got to, because that’s what I do and aim for as well. But looking at people who are so dedicated and committed through other goals has ‘inspired’ me in such a real way.
So now I am back in the office and have taken back some of the advice I gave and received at the residential. I am always so goal oriented in an outcome sense. I try to do things as quickly as possible to move onto the next task and often don’t ask people what they think to speed up the finished product. At the residential, we discussed using people’s knowledge to get the best outcome, taking time out to think about things and the importance of considering everyone’s experience (including your own, in avoiding stress etc). I had been working on archiving the people policies into an online library for the Policy Team to easily access and it had all got a bit messy, so this morning I asked for a colleagues view. I have also been refreshing some family policies and was going to finish up drafting them despite not getting all the feedback I’d wanted from various people, because of the time, but have now decided that a simple follow up email is worth it to get thorough insight into the policies and do a better, not faster job.
And that’s how my task of inspiring the young people at Think Big was flipped, and their experiences were also able to help me as well - I hope you’ve enjoyed another snippet of reflection on my time at o2 so far.

Hannah

My previous blog was a bit of an introduction, but didn’t cover what I actually do and what it’s like to work at o2. As I am first and foremost, an athlete, the most important thing to me is that as part of the Athlete Career Development Scheme, o2 fully recognise that my sport comes first and are completely supportive to ensure that my work fits around my training and competitions giving me about three working days a week.
On applying for the scheme, I showed an interest in Human Resources. I had studied Sociology at University and throughout my degree, became particularly interested in people in the workplace. In the true o2 accommodating way, they placed me within the Policy Team in HR right away, and thus began my year long placement.
O2 are currently refreshing their policies, and part of my role in the team is to refresh some of the family policies by gathering internal and external research and reviewing it with new government legislation.  I have been note-taker for disciplinary hearings, archiving the o2 policies for employment tribunals and attended various training courses for employees using policies. This has all increased my knowledge of policies, but also of the company and its culture overall.
Another aspect of my job is the ‘athlete’ role and my interest in social media (@HannahELawrence, hannahlawrencegbr.blogspot.com), which stems from searching for sponsorship earlier in my career.  I’ve become involved in some of o2’s developments within new social medias, leading so far to: my blog for the o2 careers website; presenting the ‘Digital Journalist of the Year’ and ‘Sports Journalist of the Year’ Awards at the 02 Media Awards for Yorkshire and the Humber; organising a day of fencing with o2 staff at the Bury Call Centre and Slough Office; and athlete video blogs for the o2 intranet.
And so this effective balance of my career development and being an athlete at o2 makes up the ‘o2 Athlete Career Development Scheme’ which is also currently being used by the English Institute of Sport  to help set up similar schemes within other businesses to give other athletes a similarly great opportunity.

Hannah

So first of all I must introduce myself- My name is Jonny Kew and I have recently started a year-long internship with O2 working as the Sponsorship Assistant.  I will explain more about how I got the role in later posts but for my first entry I wanted to give you a snapshot of my first month at O2.
So, what I quickly realised was that O2 is all about working hard and playing hard. O2 people definitely work on the premise that you get the fruits from your labour- and these fruits aren’t half juicy! In my first few days the intern I am taking over from (Jonny Excell) set me up with everything I needed for the world of work including a business use phone and laptop. Alongside this he gave me the complete lowdown on everybody within the Brand and Marketing team here. Working within Brand I soon realised that O2 collaborate with many agencies whereby more names needed to be remembered- it was a struggle but I’m getting there. I was living the true London lifestyle a few days a week socialising with agencies after work and finding out more about what they do in the day. It was great getting a real feel for the amount of work that goes into everything O2 push out, and really interesting to see what the agencies do and how each one differs even if it is only slightly.
I will save most of the everyday work for later posts as I have so many ‘fruits’, as I called them, to tell you about. Having been here for just over a month I already compiled a list of experiences to rival most. Below is the shortlist:
• Hosted the O2 box at Emirates for the Emirates cup
• Attended the media launch for the Get up for England campaign- whereby my job (if you can call it that) was to usher Riki Flutey round to various interviews and watch the England team cook pies
• Hosted the box at Arsenal v Liverpool and helped run the O2 blueroom
• Visited the O2 Arena
• Helped with the running of Arsenal members day whereby I brushed shoulder’s with the likes of Theo Walcott, Arsene Wenger and Martin Keown
• Obviously I had to save the best till last- I attended the England Wales rugby international at Twickenham. But that’s not all- we went on a pre-match stadium tour, had a pre-match meal with RFU council and affiliates and attended a post-match buffet with all the players. Probably the most awe-inspiring moment since working for O2, unsurprisingly.
I have tried to keep this as short as possible but I have worked here for over a month so I’m sure you can understand it is rather lengthy for a first blog post. With this in mind I should encourage you to keep track of what I’m doing as I’ll try and write short posts alongside more meaty pieces for you to get your teeth into. This is only the start of what is set to be a great year for me- I promise to discuss more of the work side- as I said O2 is all about working hard and playing hard!