Employee Access Assistant

Guide Dogs - Be Part of Something Life‑Changing

Come and join us as a motivated and thoughtful Access Assistant and be part of something life‑changing - helping people with sight loss live the life they choose.

As an Access Assistant at Guide Dogs, you’ll provide essential practical and person-centred support to a Training Dog Support Coordinator (TDSC), enabling them to work, travel and carry out their role confidently, independently and effectively. The Access Assistant will be an expert in employee empowerment, supporting our employee to thrive in the workplace.

Our Access Assistants play a huge part in ensuring everything we do enables us to deliver on our purpose and exceed expectations.

This role will be based at our Redbridge office. You’ll be working 21 hours per week, worked Monday, Wednesday and Friday 9-5.

Key Responsibilities:

• Making phone calls on behalf of the TDSC
• Creating and maintenance of data and spreadsheets
• Involvement in volunteer interviews to support TDSC
• Taking minutes in meetings and collating for future use
• Supporting with some offsite activities to recruit new fosterers

You

You’ll have a person-centred and proactive approach to providing tailored one-to-one support, adapting to individual needs and working styles. You’ll enjoy working in a close, collaborative one-to-one environment, building trust and strong working relationships, with a dedicated focus on enabling independence and effective performance. You’ll be committed to delivering high-quality support that empowers the colleague you support to succeed. You’ll act with integrity and honesty in everything you do.

Skills and Competencies

• Evidence of dealing with confidential issues sensitively and with total integrity.
• Positive, team player, flexible and thorough in ways of working.
• Proven ability to use initiative and able to work effectively under pressure.
• Good interpersonal skills are essential as the role will require a close working relationship with the person being supported.
• Computer literate with a good knowledge of all Microsoft Office packages.

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.