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My Journey To Sky Sports People Operations – #17: Jo Finon (Manager of Responsible Productions)
My Journey To Sky Sports People Operations – #17: Jo Finon (Manager of Responsible Productions)
How It Started
What was your first ever job?
My first job was as a waitress at a Little Chef, northbound on the A11 in Norfolk. It was pretty awful but taught me customer-facing skills, to stay calm under pressure and how to prioritise.
What brought you to Sky and how long have you worked here?
I was working at an Outside Broadcast company and sadly found that my desire to progress in the company was not going to happen, so I left to join Sky Sports. I started at Sky Sports in 2013, so I have worked here for 8 years, and this is my fourth job within that period.
Is your role the same now as the day you joined?
Not at all! I joined as an Operations Coordinator working with suppliers, production and SPS to get crew and kit to events and as a point of escalation. Then, I was quickly promoted to be Operations Supervisor, looking after the expenses and operations team and 1 day a week the production coordinators. This is where I started to implement changes to improve working practices, like going paperless with our expenses team and removing the single-use plastic for the outside broadcasts. In my free time, I helped production managing occasionally and during quiet periods helped James Clement and Lee Hobley. In 2017, I joined the Contracts department as Contracts Supervisor, which became Contracts Manager. This built on my existing supplier knowledge and OBs, however, it was using our contracts to drive changes that really excited me, and thanks to our contracts team really started to make some massive differences with getting suppliers to change their operations to be more environmentally friendly, inclusive and increase the crew welfare. This just snowballed led to personally giving Rob Webster a brief of what we have been up to with Sky Sports sustainability initiatives. During this brief, we pointed out that to drive further change we needed to dedicate a resource to this topic, and in December 2020, my current job as Manager of Responsible Productions was created. It is a true marker of how seriously Sky Sports takes sustainability (environmental, inclusion, modern slavery and wellbeing) that we have someone full time on this, driving change for our productions. It is a mammoth task, and it can be quite daunting, but we are leading the industry from an environmental perspective and won two awards last year for our efforts. Fingers crossed for more!
What was your biggest professional challenge and what was your greatest achievement?
My biggest professional challenge is a hard one to say as I’ve had a few. When I was a runner, I was asked to clean dog faeces off a director’s shoe, so I’d say that was a particular low point. But honestly speaking, I think moving on from companies where I’m not progressing, as it was key to my career. I’d have to say that my greatest achievement was having my passion and enthusiasm for sustainability being recognised and creating a job out of it.
How It’s Going
What does your day to day work life look like?
Meetings, meetings, meetings. I host a lot and try to encourage people to make improvements to our working practices. I speak at conferences, events and attend events not just for our industry but also to try and gain inspiration. In the future, I hope to be able to get back to attending productions to talk to suppliers and crew to see how things work in practice and where the challenges are.
What’s been your Sky Sports career highlight and why?
In previous roles within Sky Sports, it was being shortlisted for the improvements we made to the Sky Sports expenses department. But in my current role, other than making my job, I’d have to say Sky Sports winning the 2020 SVG Green Award and switching to biofuel on our OBs. Switching to biofuel on our OBs has been such a huge achievement – our whole OB was powered on diesel, so for us to move away from this was a massive step and we shared this with other broadcasters. Now, the whole sports broadcasting industry has moved away from fossil fuels, and because of 'Game Zero', so have the player coaches.
What can you see yourself doing next?
As sustainable productions continue to gather momentum and my experience in this area grows, I hope that there will be progression opportunities. The topic is never-ending as technology improves, new areas of concern arise and we’re introducing more content ideas.
How It Can Be Done
What are your top 3 tips for becoming a Manager of Responsible Productions?
- If you’re not seeing progression, move on and don’t burn any bridges. You will see those people again.
- Look around you and try to understand other people’s jobs. There’s a chance you may spot more opportunities for either your own roles progression or your careers, and you can support your team better.
- Enjoy your job as life’s too short to not do something you enjoy.
What would you tell your 16-year-old self?
Don’t clean anyone else’s shoes!
