Loudwater Combined Students get Creative at Gartner

On Tuesday 21st January 10 Finding Futures students from Loudwater Combined School went on their World of Work Trip. Yes Futures organises this trip for selected students to gain an insight into the opportunities available to them in the future. The Finding Futures students are able to practice the 4 talents they have been developing during their coaching sessions. Let's see how they got on with one of Yes Futures inspirational workplace partners: Gartner!

We arrived at the Gartner office based in Egham right on time and were greeted by our host Alistair where we swiftly got going with introductions and an overview of what Gartner does as a company. We learnt that Gartner are a tech consultancy firm that helps other companies with their technology by giving advice and helping them to problem-solve.

The day began with introductions from Alistair, Kev and Christie about what they do in the company and a chance to ask them some questions. We then had the opportunity to get up on our feet and go on a tour of their grand office. On the tour they got to see across 5 levels all the different departments including Sales, Human resources, Finance, Marketing and more.

Once back in the boardroom and after a quick break we got going again and the students had the opportunity to interview three of Gartner’s staff members where they learnt about what their role was; their likes and dislikes are about their jobs; if they had any jobs prior to working at Gartner; if they went to university etc… All of the students demonstrated great communication skills and confidence when asking their questions.

After our lunch break, in a room that could see the top of some of Thorpe Park’s rides in the distance, we had the opportunity to gain some more understanding of what Gartner does. The children were each given a box of Lego to try and build an item without any instructions, sounds easy right, think again! With 15 minutes on the clock the children gave it a go and on reflection the general consensus was that it wasn’t very easy and very confusing. The students all identified that some resilience was needed in this instance to not give up. With another 15 minutes on the clock after being given the box with the picture and the instruction manual we gave it another go. The reflection after this attempt was that it was much easier with instructions but sometimes still needed some help. This gave some insight into Gartner being like the instruction manual and being available to help a company/client achieve their desired result.

The final activity of the day was the students worked together in pairs to create a website for an event. They then had to present their website design back to the rest of the room. We saw some great teamwork in this exercise and all of the students presented with confidence. A huge well done to them all.

After a jam packed day of activity and learning we swiftly made our way back to school. A huge thank you to Alistair and his team at Gartner for putting on such an insightful and enjoyable World of Work day.

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To find out more about how your students could get involved with the Yes Futures Programmes, please contact Sophie, Impact Manager: sophie@yesfutures.org, 07908 687779 or visit our website.

If you're interested in becoming a World of Work partner, please contact Helena, Head of Programmes: helena@yesfutures.org.