About Fast Futures
We are proud to partner with Fast Futures to provide young people with practical advice and professional support as they navigate starting their careers.
Avado’s FastFutures is a social venture that believes everyone should have the same opportunity to shape their future whatever their background. Through a free-to-access development programme the organisation supports young people, regardless of their background or geographical location, to develop the skills needed for employment whilst simultaneously helping to address skills gaps for employers.
Offering collaborative projects, interview practice and virtual site visits, young people gain insight into the workplace coming away with valuable knowledge gained through exposure to different communities and perspectives.
Participants aged between 18 – 24 spend around 10 hours a week participating in a wide range of educational modules including 1-2-1 mentoring provided by individuals from organisations including BT and CGI.
Our Partnership
Having joined the programme as a corporate partner in 2020, CGI has already seen more than 500 members act as mentors, together supporting as many as 550 young people.
Mentor volunteers sprang up across the entirety of CGI, at every level, in every business unit and every location. This provided a diverse group witha range of experience, knowledge and skills to share with mentees, each with the shared objective of helping a young person develop the skills to help them navigate the transition from education to the workplace.
Participating CGI Members are provided with training on how to mentor effectively and a range of content they can share with their mentee to help their development including interview tips from CGI’s early careers recruitment specialist.
As a Responsible Business, CGI allocates each member one day a year to dedicate to volunteering activities of their choice. This empowers our CGI volunteers to provide hours of valuable mentoring sessions without worrying about their day jobs, as the time is already set aside.
Speaking about the partnership with CGI, Matthew Ansbro, Managing Director of FastFutures said
“CGI are in many ways the perfect partner for FastFutures. Their financial investment enables us to train hundreds of young people, the CGI mentors are generous with their time and expertise, and they themselves are keen to listen to and understand their next generation of colleagues. In addition, CGI’s commitment to hiring young talent from diverse backgrounds creates career opportunities for our learners, who apply to them safe in the knowledge they that would be joining an exciting and progressive organisation with the values that young people expect of an employer today.”
CGI’s Fast Futures project lead Victoria Waterfield said
“CGI’s partnership with Fast Futures initially came from our desire to help at a time of crisis, the pandemic having negatively impacted on so many young people career prospects and confidence. But the reality was that while our members shared their skills to help others they benefitted too, with almost all of our 500 CGI mentors reporting the experience had helped them to grow professionally or personally”.
“What’s more, the ability to connect with so many smart, driven young people has influenced our thinking regarding our approach to recruitment and our HR team are now considering the development of additional new routes into early careers at CGI, the result of which could result in some mentees, or their peers, securing roles as permanent employees. In this way Fast Futures has not only helped the career prospects of the individuals we have mentored but also the inclusivity of our business and our access to bright new talent. A win-win for which we are extremely grateful.”
Positive Outcomes
Feedback from FastFutures mentees highlights the success of the programme so far:
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97% feel more employable thanks to the programme
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92% are able to apply their learnings in the workplace
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96% have changed their views and opinions through exposure to different communities and perspectives
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92% rate their experience as good or excellent
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45% are getting more interviews within a month of completing FastFutures
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1,000 of the first 2,000 trained have secured jobs
The positive social impact of FastFutures on young participants and businesses is clear to see. And as one of the largest corporate partners of the programme CGI has committed to at least one further year of support throughout 2022 and anticipates a growing number of members participating as mentors in the scheme.
For more information about our work with the FastFutures programme, please contact Victoria Waterfield.
