Blog

At O2 it is so easy to feel comfortable at work, I’m not just talking about the comfy chairs but the people and the dress code. You never would have thought what you wear would have such an impact on how productive you are. Especially working in sponsorship one key ingredient is creativity. This is strangely made easier through wearing clothes you feel happy in. You wouldn’t be out of place in a shirt or polo and jeans. Wonderful! But this weather is certainly not making choice of attire any easier- that time of year when it looks perfectly fine and you get outside to find its freezing!

Obviously I don’t have vast experience of working in various offices but from the few work placements I have done I can safely say O2 have got it right. Some might say the location isn’t the greatest, but once you see the office and step inside you totally forget where you are. It’s all those quirky little touches that actually make you want to get up and come to work. From cardboard cut outs of squirrels to meeting rooms with individual themes like Rugby or the O2 Academies.  This is what makes working at O2 on Bath Road one of the easiest and best places to stay from 9-5.

Although I say 9-5, I have slowly started realising that you often find yourself staying till much later. At first glance this may seem terrible but I found myself at the office till 8:15pm last night and was perfectly fine with it.

As I have said before the mindset here is very much; work hard, play hard.

Jonny

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

It’s nice to travel up to London sometimes, change of scene from the offices in Slough (don’t get me wrong, I love our Slough office, but a change is as good as a rest etc).

Anyway, I have had a few trips up to London recently to see our friends at Penna Communications, the main reason being to update our careers site!

Don’t worry, it will still look largely the same, but we have had a lot of things happening in our directorates in the last few months so we want to make sure you know exactly what is going on. We want to make sure you have the most up to date information about all our different areas and to tell you about things that might be coming up in the future.

So in the next few weeks we are talking to all our directors to get the low down on their areas, and the best bit is we have a film crew coming to our Bath Road and Preston Brook sites to get some (hopefully) great video content for the site. This is going to be very cool as I’ll be the one taking them round which gives me the chance to play up to my inner desire to be Welles/Kubrick/Spielberg/Tarantino . . . lights, camera, action Mr Evans . . . sorry, got a bit carried away there :-S

We have loads of plans for new things on the careers site, our facebook page and twitter feed, which will mean we can update you about what we are doing, what jobs we have and what it is like to work here.

We are also keen to hear from you about the site and our facebook and twitter feed, is there anything you would like to see?

Must dash, got a filming schedule to write, that’s all folks . . . for now anyway

Harry