Switchboard Operator

**Position**:Switchboard Operator
- **Pay**:£10.09 - £17.15
- **Location**: Brighton
- **Hours**:Monday to Friday 8am - 4pm or Monday to Thursday 10pm - 7am
- **Duration**: Minimum 9 months

Responsible for responding to calls from members of the public and directing calls to the relevant department.

**Duties**

- To manage the internal emergency telephones terminated in the Switchboard room and be fully conversant with all hospital emergency procedures.
- To manage and monitor all emergency systems inclusive of fire, plant, fridge, lifts, medical gas, panic/burglar, and any other alarms. To initiate emergency procedures and liaise with relevant emergency services as required. It is the responsibility ofthe telephonists to initiate the correct procedure and provide full and accurate documentation with follow up interviews where necessary. Including, contacting on-call staff in accordance with agreed policies and procedures. Be able to act on own initiativeby prioritising these calls in order of importance and taking the appropriate action required to respond to these incidents. Maintain a record of these incidents.
- The Switchboard staff responds to and initiates the call out procedure for all Major Incident plans participating fully, with confidence and accuracy, imparting vital information to staff and outside agencies.
- To operate the internal bleep system for emergency team calls and non-emergency calls including test calls in line with Trust policies and procedures.
- Deal with the distribution and recording of internal and external pagers and ensure they are issued in a working condition. Identify faults and replace pagers.
- Programme bleep receivers and operate both internal paging and external radio paging systems. Monitor and record bleep transfers and changes.
- Monitor requests to dial external telephone numbers from internal callers in order to avoid misuse of the telephone system. Check validity of the calls and report to the Telecoms manager if misuse suspected.
- During office hours report all telephone system faults and failures to the Telecommunications manager and out of hours to the network provider and engineers.
Communication

- To work a busy Switchboard receiving and directing all calls that are presented in an efficient and effective manner. The telephonists are required to give appropriate assistance and advice being courteous and helpful at all times whilst maintaining totalconfidentiality.
- Telephonists must be responsible and have alert and calm communication skills that can diffuse hostile situations when handling difficult calls from irate and aggressive callers. They must provide sympathetic support to the elderly, hard of hearing, callerswhere English is not their first language, distressed or bereaved callers and those with serious mental health problems especially suicidal clients.
- Understand complex information and be able to pass this onto the relevant professional groups/manager for action.
- To book taxi's with City cabs and record requests from staff and departments for taxis as required.
- To give advice to staff on using the Trusts telephony services, including the use of bleeps, radio pagers, and telephone features.
- Deal with and resolve service issues and complaints and to inform the Telecommunications manager of any issues which affect the departments operation.
- Operators will provide assistance and advice to customers. The Operator will log telephone faults and all requests for support and either resolve directly or for more complex issues assign to Telecoms manager or to IT team. Follow the fault process forreported handset/extension faults and organise repair/replacement in accordance with procedure.
*First Recruitment Services are acting as an employment agency in relation to this vacancy.

First Recruitment Services is acting as an Employment Business in relation to this assignment.