Fat Beehive takes on another Code4000 graduate!

Imagining a time before Amanul’s infectious laugh and unmistakable Brummie accent around the office is difficult for everyone at Fat Beehive, which is a testament to his character after only joining in August 2021. Since then, Amanul has become an instrumental part of the Fat Beehive development team and has worked across a number of projects.

Amanul discovered his passion for coding after attending a Code4000 workshop and, since joining Fat Beehive, has been putting his new skills into practice in the client support team by handling a number of service desk tickets and supporting our partners in ensuring their websites continue to deliver on their goals.

With Amanul being the second graduate we’ve taken on from Code4000’s training programme, we believe it’s vital we promote not only the benefit for the individual but also the benefits of employing prison leavers has to businesses and the wider community. The yearly cost of reoffending within the UK is approximately £18bn and coupled with growing rates of reoffending, this is only set to rise in the coming years.

One of our key motivations for working with Code4000 was to increase the diversity of thought within our team –  we produce better outcomes for our partners if we have a diverse team that have a range of different life experiences and ways of thinking to projects. There are many other factors we see as huge benefits of working with prison-leavers and the likes of Code4000, including the significant reduction of reoffending rates for those in employment and also is aiming to fill the skills gap that exists within the coding and web development sector. 

Our first Code4000 graduate, Ben, exceeded our expectations – within six months he was not only working on complex sites for clients but was one of our most productive developers and he has been recognised as employee of the month twice in his first six months.

There are a number of advantages to employing prison leavers and we’re hopeful that by sharing the successes of our graduates of Code4000 that now work at Fat Beehive, other small to medium-sized organisations will be encouraged to adopt this approach. Sadly though, we think Amanul might be one in a million! 

If you want to learn more about the benefits of hiring prison-leavers, you can listen to Amanul talk in-depth about his experience on this episode of Catch 22’s Catch22Minutes podcast.