Front of House Officer

Typical job description and responsibilities

Front of House Officer Duties and Responsibilities:

You can expect to spend lots of time on your feet in this role. Also, you must maintain a good level of professionalism at all times as your employers will more than likely be informed if you are considered rude to a visitor or member of staff. This means that you must always remain aware of how you treat the people that you interact with.

Most officers in this role are also expected to have a friendly demeanor when dealing with those entering the building. That requires a level of communication that can be difficult to maintain at some times. The people who are more suited for this role have naturally friendly personalities. However, you are still responsible for the security of your clients and so you will have to find the balance between being courteous while also being able to spot trouble. 

Following training for this role, you will be equipped with the skills to:

• Assist staff and contractors at your assignment
• Manage visitors effectively
• Professionally answer incoming calls
• If needed handle the switchboard 
• Provide flawless customer service
• Handle crises and emergencies while being calm and confident

Front of House Officers are also responsible for:  

• Greeting visitors and staff
• Ensuring the safety of the building by ensuring no one who isn’t authorized doesn’t get in
• Remaining vigilant to be able to spot suspicious behavior
• Communicating with the rest of the security team if you believe that you have spotted a threat entering the building

Working Conditions

In this role, you should expect to always maintain a clean uniform as you are the first person that people meet on a daily or nightly basis. As such, you want to represent your company well and should aim as best as possible to always be sharp. You should also always display your ID since if you are called upon to stop someone from entering a building, they can see that you have the authority to do so.

A Front of House Officer is required, in a lot of cases, on a 24-hour basis and because of this, you can expect to work weekends and public holidays sometimes.

Skills and personal qualities required: 

A Front of House Officer needs to be:

• A great communicator
• Always alert of their surroundings
• Dedicated to observing the behavior of individuals entering the compound
• Detail-oriented 
• Physically fit
• A quick problem solver
• Able to detect suspicious movements and behavior
• Knowledgeable of licensing laws and health and safety regulations
• Able to write basic reports and detail events accurately

Education required

There are no specific qualifications such as GCSEs required to take your SIA course. However, because all you need is your SIA qualification you will be competing with a lot of people from countries around the world who have the right to work in the UK. You should have at least a strong command of English and be able to handle technology.

Benefits of the jobs:

• Getting to meet new people
• Management of crowds
• Developing real investigative skills
• Potentially meeting new famous people depending on your assignment
• Developing teamwork skills
• Developing better communication skills 

 Life skills they would acquire:

The job requires excellent human resource skills and so you will learn a lot about how to interact with people and get the best responses possible from them. It will also teach you patience as you will have many different types of situations to face which in many instances will require you to remain calm and collected. 

In addition to gaining new skills in handling people you can also expect to:

• Learn about working in a team
• Gain new communication techniques
• Hone conflict management tactics
• Improve customer service skills