A day in the life of...a Concierge Service Manager

Helen Garbutt is the Concierge Service Manager and has been working at YHN for 3 years. Concierge management is about the day to day management of the service and staff as well as setting the direction for the service – looking at where we want to go and how we’re going to get there. A key part of that is making sure the service gives customers what they need and working with the staff to ensure they have the skills they need to deliver the service. No mean feat when we have around 150 concierge staff working across the city!

“I don’t get around the service as much as I’d like, but I have to prioritise my time and with the implementation of the recent Concierge Service Review ongoing there are some huge things happening within the service at the moment. It’s really exciting and is going to mean some big changes in the near future, and it’s these tasks which require my attention at the moment.

“A typical day for me looks like this…”

8.00am

I come in and my first task is to look in my diary to see what I have on today. I go through my e-mails and action anything that’s urgent and then go through my task list and prepare for any meetings I have throughout the day.

10am – 12pm

I have an Absence Management Board meeting to go to. The group looks at attendance management within the company at a strategic level and how we are supporting employees to regularly attend work across the business. In this meeting we were looking at the Service Level Agreement with Occupational Health as well as looking at attendance levels, absence trends and the development of an intranet page for attendance management.

It’s really important for the Concierge Service to be involved in Absence Management Board due to the number of staff in the service, the shift patterns worked and the type of work that is undertaken by staff.  We work with the Absence Management Procedures on a daily basis so we were able to assist in the creation of the new procedures by making suggestions on what does and doesn’t work for us and identifying areas of the old procedures which needed clarification.  We are really pleased with the new procedure Human Resources created.

12pm – 12.30pm

I grab some lunch then quickly check my e-mails to see if anything urgent has come up whilst I’ve been in meetings.

1.30pm – 3pm

Another meeting, this time about our Service Level Agreement with Neighbourhood Services for the cleaning of communal areas and YHN offices. We’ve been working really closely with them and have changed the meetings from quarterly to monthly because it is such a talking point with tenants. Cleanliness of blocks is really important to them so we have to make sure they’re of a satisfactory standard and that we always look for ways to improve. We currently have a trial running within 6 blocks of a new specification we’d like to introduce across the city.

3pm- 5pm

I spend some time at my desk catching up before heading off to a review implementation meeting. I am leading on the Concierge Service Review implementation and there are a number of meetings taking place around it as it has been split into a number of workgroups which all meet regularly.  It’s one of the largest investments the company is going to make and is going to have a big impact on both staff and customers. This meeting is a HR Working Group looking at things such as job descriptions, shift patterns and consultation processes.  The technical consultants we have just engaged are also about to start work so in the next 12 months we should see a number of procurements leading to the creation of a Control Room and the networking of all the Concierge blocks across the city.  Really exciting times for the service, but also a lot of hard work for all involved.

I get chance to spend some more time at my desk to catch up and pull all the information together for the review, making sure any background information is available for the consultants when they come in.

I’ve also been working on writing reports for Management Team – one around extending building cleaning into low rises across the city as a result of consultation with customers and another report on the review.  Some information I have been waiting for has just arrived for one of the reports so I add this to it.

5pm – 7pm

Tonight I have a team meeting and team brief to attend. Because of the different shift patterns and the requirement to have a Concierge at each site the best time for team meetings is in the evening.  Each team meets every six weeks so that we can keep them up to date on information coming from Management Team and updates on performance but also to get any suggestions and ideas from staff.

It’s been a long day but finally it’s time to go home…!