Reception Coordinator

Guide Dogs - Where Every Role Makes a Difference

Come and join us as a supportive and confident Reception Coordinator and be part of something life‑changing - helping people with sight loss live the life they choose.

As a Reception Coordinator at Guide Dogs, you’ll deliver exceptional customer service while providing efficient and effective reception and administrative support for the Forfar office. Acting as the first point of contact for visitors, volunteers and colleagues, you’ll help ensure a welcoming, professional and well-organised environment that supports our mission of enabling people with sight loss to live the life they choose. The Reception Coordinator will be an expert in customer service, reception operations, visitor management, data administration and office support. Our Reception Coordinators play a huge part in ensuring everything we do enables us to deliver on our purpose and exceed expectations.

This role is based on site at our Forfar Training School, working 14 hours per week, Thursday and Friday, 9am to 5pm.

Key Responsibilities

• Provide an efficient, friendly and knowledgeable presence at reception. Ensure calls, deliveries and visitors are dealt with according to agreed procedures and that messages are passed on efficiently, in the required format and followed up where necessary.
• To ensure that adequate cover is in place by co-ordinating & actively supporting a volunteer programme in liaison with the Workplace Services Team and Volunteering staff.
• Ensure security procedures are followed by maintaining accurate visitor records and by ensuring agreed Health & Safety procedures are adhered to at all times. Issuing visitor badges and sigining visitors out.
• Maintain computer based records  as required and ensure data is input in line with agreed timescales.
• Operate diary bookings for meeting rooms and ensure any special requests/needs are anticipated and catered for. Check Outlook diaries for events at least daily to inform planning and handover with cover staff, including volunteers.

You

You’ll have a customer-focused approach to delivering excellent service. You’ll enjoy working in a busy front-line environment with a dedicated focus on welcoming visitors, managing enquiries and supporting day-to-day operations, whilst being committed to providing a positive experience for everyone you interact with. You’ll act with integrity and honesty in everything you do.

Skills and Competencies

• GCSE passes in Maths & English at least at Grade C or equivalent (QCF level 2/ SQCF level 5)
• Worked in a front-line customer service environment with experience of managing visitors and representing the organisation with a positive attitude and professional appearance.
• Able to manage the expectations of the customer and recognise when to escalate issues to a higher level.
• Completing general administrative tasks.
• Cleaning, organising, and maintaining the reception area.
• Greeting visitors to the facility warmly and offering them help immediately and signing in visitors and supplying them visitor's badges.
• Experience of multi-tasking and prioritising tasks.
• Good level of ability and familiarisation with Microsoft office applications such as Outlook, Word and Excel.

Benefits

We wouldn’t be able to change the lives of people with sight loss without our people. That’s why it’s important for us to provide a variety of benefits that reward our colleagues in a way that suits them and recognises the hard work and contribution that they make.

• 26 days annual leave. After three years of continuous employment, this increases to 28 days plus bank holidays.
• Real Living Wage Employer
• Flex pot - equal to a proportion of your annual salary to use on our wide variety of flexible benefits
• The option to buy and sell annual leave
• Discounts and cash-back scheme
• Excellent pension scheme (We will match your pension contributions plus 2% up to a maximum of 9% employer contribution)
• And lots more!

For high volumes of applications, we reserve the right to close adverts earlier than advertised.

Our Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion

Behind Every Guide Dog Is Someone Like You - We’re passionate about creating an inclusive workplace that celebrates and values diversity. Bring your whole self to work regardless of age, disability, gender identity or reassignment, marital or civil partner status, pregnancy or maternity, race, nationality, ethnic or national origin, religion or belief, sex or sexual orientation. We don’t want you to ‘fit’ our culture, we want you to enrich it. 

How to apply

Further details on the full role are attached below. When you are ready to apply, submit an online application form via this page.  Please note - If you are successful you will need to provide evidence of your right to work in the UK via our digital ID checking supplier.  We cannot offer visa sponsorship at this time.

As part of your application ensure you provide evidence and examples of how your skills & experience meet the criteria as set out in the attached job description. You will also be asked to complete a few job-specific questions, so please be prepared to write your answers to these questions.

If you choose to use AI tools to assist in completing your application, please use them appropriately.  We value authenticity. If you want to stand out, using a generic AI-generated response isn’t going to separate you from the crowd. This is your time to shine and showcase your unique skills, personality, and thought processes!  You can find our full statement on the use of AI to complete applications on our careers website.

If you would like to have an informal conversation about the role before applying, or require any accessibility support to apply, our friendly recruitment team is ready and waiting to help. Call them on 0118 3540345 or drop an email to [email protected].

Safer recruitment

Guide Dogs follow Safer Recruitment practices to ensure we are safeguarding the vulnerable people we work with. As part of this, we require a full work history with any gaps accounted for & a minimum of 2 professional referee details fully covering the past 5 years. If you are applying for a disclosure role, please note that you will be required to undergo an enhanced DBS check and sign up to the DBS update service.

At Guide Dogs, we believe in fair and equitable hiring practices. A criminal record will not automatically disqualify an applicant from consideration for a position. Each case will be evaluated individually. We encourage all candidates to disclose relevant information, and we assure you that it will be handled confidentially and fairly.