Switchboard Operator
Closed for applications on: 10-May-2024 00:00
Vacancy status: Closed
Closed for applications on: 10-May-2024 00:00
Key details
Location
- Site
- St Thomas'
- Town
- London
- Postcode
- SE1 7EH
- Major / Minor Region
- London
Contract type & working pattern
- Contract
- Permanent
- Hours
- Full time - 37.5 hours per week (Full and Part Time hours will be considered. Part Time hours must be disclosed in application form)
Salary
- Salary
- £27,948 - £29,468 p.a inc HCA (Pro rata if part time)
- Salary period
- Yearly
- Grade
- (NHS AfC: Band 3)
Specialty
- Main area
- Switchboard
Guy’s and St Thomas’ is among the UK’s busiest and most successful NHS foundation trusts. We provide a full range of hospital and community services for people in south London and as well as specialist care for patients from further afield including cancer, renal, orthopaedic, respiratory and cardiovascular services.
Guy’s is home to the largest dental school in Europe and a £160 million Cancer Centre opened in 2016. As part of our commitment to provide care closer to home, in 2017 we also opened a cancer centre and a kidney treatment centre at Queen Mary’s Hospital in Sidcup. St Thomas’ has one of the largest critical care units in the UK and one of the busiest emergency departments in London. It is also home to Evelina London Children’s Hospital.
Evelina London cares for local children in Lambeth and Southwark and provides specialist services across south east England including cardiac, renal and critical care services. We lead a number of specialist service networks aiming to ensure children are treated locally where possible, but have access to specialist expertise when they need it. Our community services include health visiting, school nursing and support for families of children with long-term conditions.
Our adult community services teams deliver care at the heart of the local communities we serve, working in partnership with GPs, local authorities and other healthcare and voluntary sector organisations. Working with our partners in Lambeth and Southwark, we are focusing on new ways of working to improve care for local patients.
In February 2021 the Royal Brompton and Harefield joined Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, bringing together world-leading expertise in the care and research of heart and lung disease. Our merger provides a once in a generation opportunity to build a lasting, world-renowned heart and lung centre, providing the highest quality care for patients and conducting world-leading research.
We have a reputation for clinical excellence and high quality teaching and research. We are part of King’s Health Partners, one of eight accredited UK academic health sciences centres. In partnership with King’s College London we have dedicated clinical research facilities including an MHRA accredited Phase I clinical trials unit.
Patients are at the heart of everything we do and we pride ourselves on ensuring the best possible patient experience as well as safe, high quality care. We are proud to have one of the lowest mortality rates in the NHS. Following a comprehensive Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspection in 2019 we maintained our overall rating of ‘good’. Our adult community services achieved a rating of ‘outstanding’.
The commitment of our 23,500 staff is key to our success. We are one of the largest local employers and we aim to develop and support all our staff so they are able to deliver high quality, safe and efficient care. The 2019 NHS staff survey results show that we have one of the most engaged and motivated workforces in the NHS. We know this has a positive impact on the care provided to our patients.
We have one of the most ambitious capital investment programmes anywhere in the NHS.
Job overview
This is a telephony based role with no face to face patient contact. You will be providing an efficient and effective switchboard operator service to all callers to the trust internal and external, you will deal with emergency situations, responding quickly and have the ability to follow procedures in an efficient and accurate manner, implementing emergency protocols when required. You will provide and constantly deliver a warm, courteous and prompt response to all telephone enquiries in an efficient and professional manner to our patients, staff and other stakeholders. You will be trained to deliver exceptional customer service to the highest standard and will be required to multi-skill across other services within the department as a secondary service.
We are looking for customer service oriented staff to work on our busy Hospital switchboard. We currently host all switchboard services to Guys and St Thomas Hospital, Great Ormond Street Hospital.
The service is 24/7 and full time vacancies will work to a rolling rota with shift patterns between 08:00 (earliest start time) – 20:00 (latest finish time) covering Monday to Friday, weekends and bank holidays.
Previous Applicants that have applied in the last 6 months need not apply.
Advert
As a Switchboard Operator you will enjoy working directly with patients and/or customers to identify their needs and signpost them accordingly. You will recognize the importance of first class communication skills to achieve customer satisfaction. The primary objective is to provide:
- A positive experience for each patient and external contact – every call matters.
- Professional and high quality customer service to every caller.
- Effective and timely resolution of all queries received
- Support to patients and external clients, ensuring that they are welcomed to the Trust.
- To support the Trust in providing quality care to its patients.
As the first line of contact for callers the post holder is responsible for providing an efficient and responsive service as our department is the interface for the hospital and will often be the caller’s first experience of the Trust.
You will need excellent communication skills and the ability to adapt your call handling methods to suit the variety of callers you will come in to contact with is paramount. You will often be engaging with distressed or vulnerable callers that will look for guidance and signposting.
We provide external organisations with Switchboard Services and out of hour’s message handling and call answering services.
Working for our organisation
Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust comprises five of the UK’s best known hospitals – Guy’s, St Thomas’, Evelina London Children’s Hospital, Royal Brompton and Harefield – as well as community services in Lambeth and Southwark, all with a long history of high quality care, clinical excellence, research and innovation.
We are among the UK’s busiest, most successful foundation trusts. We provide specialist care for patients including heart and lung, cancer and renal services as well as a full range of local hospital and community services for people in Lambeth and Southwark.
Our Trust values are Put patients first, Take pride in what we do, Respect others, Strive to be the best, Act with Integrity
What We Offer
The NHS Pension Scheme - one of the most generous and comprehensive in the UK. When you start working for the NHS you automatically become a member and you will get an excellent package of pension benefits.
Interest free Season Ticket Loan
Long Term Service Awards
Subsidised on-site nurseries and childcare vouchers
A comprehensive staff health and well-being programme, '5 ways to a healthier YOU' Ride to work scheme
Employee assistance programme
Free stop smoking service
Detailed job description and main responsibilities
Core Duties and Responsibilities
Call Handling
- Operate as a Switchboard Operator using Trust technology; identifying and escalating operational issues appropriately
- Provide a consistently high quality of service to all customers, identifying their needs, offer advice and assisting them to access services provided by the Trust and those of our partners.
- Responsible for answering all enquiries pleasantly, efficiently and effectively with patients, staff and public on the telephone in line with departmental standards and deal with problems as they arise.
- Problem solve queries and ensure that each query has been effectively managed and responded to in a timely manner.
- To use advanced listening, probing and facilitative skills across a wide range of calls, some of which can be highly challenging due to emotive circumstances or caller aggression.
- Deal with a high volume of telephone enquiries and use your own initiative to prioritise workload.
- Pass on information accurately i.e. any changes to personal information requiring entry into the relevant information pages including patient databases
- Deal with any emergency calls as a priority adhering to processes and procedures
- Understand an operators role in Major, significant and critical incidents and to ensure communications cascades are completed in line with agreed procedures.
- Competently use a bleep and/or pager system to contact Trust staff as agreed in standard operating procedures
- To meet daily key performance indicators (KPIs) and targets.
- To work at any hospital site as required including Telephony managed service sites
- Understand the operation of key systems within the department relevant to the query.
- Participate in a rotating shift pattern; to include Public Holidays and weekends; in line with service requirements; unless otherwise agreed.
- Support Trust call centres out of hours providing a message handling service where appropriate and under direction of management.
Administration and System Management
- To record all Incidents and Requests with the appropriate information, prioritisation and classification, and updating of Incident data.
- Using in-house computer applications to facilitate the support services offered by Customer Services to the Trust:
- To co-operate with all others in the Customer Services Team to ensure that it works as an efficient, highly motivated and capable workforce whose prime interest is in helping the Trust staff care for its patients
- Maintain accurate data records of tasks undertaken as directed by a Team Leader
- Carry out any other administrative duties as may be allocated by the Team Leader /Supervisor/manager.
- Keep accurate records of tasks undertaken, ensuring escalation to a team leader / manager as necessary
Other duties
- Once appropriately skilled; support team leaders and managers by participating in ‘buddy’ system to support and coach new staff in line with training plans and agreed Training and Development framework.
- Attend training sessions to ensure knowledge regarding department and trust systems is up to date and knowledge of associated policies and documentation are kept current.
- Contribute to the continuous improvement within your team to help increase customer satisfaction and more effective working processes.
- Adhere to departmental standards.
- Follow and adhere to Trust Policies and Processes
- Assist Trust call centres where appropriate with out of hours message handling
Guy’s and St Thomas’ celebrates, respects and values the diversity of its staff and patients. We review our policies, procedures and practices to ensure that all employees, patients and carers are treated equitable according to their needs. We are actively committed to ensuring that no one who applies for a job, works or study’s at the Trust, or accesses our services is discriminated against on the grounds of race, ethnicity, nationality, disability, religion or belief, age, gender identity , gender reassignment, sexual orientation, pregnancy and maternity/paternity, or marital/civil partnership.
Applications are welcomed from applicants with a disability. We can make reasonable adjustments and offer support and advice in a variety of ways throughout the application process. Equality of opportunity is our policy.
As an organisation we are committed to developing our services in ways that best suit the needs of our patients. This means that some staff groups will increasingly be asked to work a more flexible shift pattern so that we can offer services in the evenings or at weekends.
Flexible working
We are committed to supporting all employees to achieve a healthy work life balance and to work in a way that is best for them and our patients. We will consider all requests to work flexibly, taking in to account the individual’s personal circumstances as well the needs of the service. We encourage all prospective applicants to discuss their individual circumstances with the recruiting manager as part of the on-boarding process.
Your e-mail address is important to us - We communicate to all job applicants via the e-mail address which has been provided on the application form. Please ensure that you check your e-mail on a regular basis.
Please apply for this post by clicking "Apply Online Now."
Person specification
Qualifications
Essential criteria
- GCSE in English and mathematics or equivalent
- NVQ in Customer Service
Exper
Essential criteria
- Significant experience of working within a contact centre or busy / large switchboard environment
- First class customer services skills and/or Call Centre Experience
Desirable criteria
- Significant experience of dealing directly with the general public in a customer focused environment in a large organisation.
Knowledge
Essential criteria
- Excellent verbal & written communications skills with the ability to communicate effectively by phone, in writing, and in person.
- Ability to use Microsoft Office packages competently and numerious applications/systems to support all service
- Ability to make effective decisions within established procedures and Capable of following procedures and systematic processes
- Able and willing to deal effectively with a diverse range of customer enquiries
- Take ownership for resolution of enquiries and complaints and resolve using own iniative
- Evidence of delivering a first class service to a diverse range of customers from initial point of contact
- Ability to cope with a high volume, pressured environment
- Effective team player
Desirable criteria
- Trained to use IPMs
Further details / informal visits contact
- Name
- Marie Parsons
- Job title
- CS Trainer
- Email address
- [email protected]
- Telephone number
- 02071886506
No longer accepting applications
Sorry, this vacancy is no longer accepting applications.
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