Helpline Officer

The Silver Line Helpline is recruiting for Helpline Officers to join their fantastic team providing a vital service to older people across the UK. The Silver Line Helpline is a free, confidential telephone service offering friendship, conversation and support to older people, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Representing the values of The Silver Line Helpline and Age UK, you will be the first point of contact for incoming calls from older people in need of support or just a friendly chat. Given the nature of the helpline each day will be varied and you will need to be adaptable to lots of unique situations.

This exciting opportunity is perfect for a friendly individual with effective communication skills and the ability to maintain high standards with an emphasis on empathy, patience and understanding.

Working as part of this supportive team, you will adhere to all safeguarding procedures in order to keep callers safe from potential abuse or neglect.

We have 5 part-time vacancies working 28 hours per week.

These exciting positions offer hybrid working between home and our Blackpool office, surrounded by excellent amenities. Candidates must be willing to travel to the Blackpool office a minimum of once a week.

Please note that this post does require weekend and bank holiday working on a shift pattern basis.

We will provide a questionnaire for you to complete which includes training dates, hybrid working expectations and example shift patterns.

Must haves:

Excellent interpersonal skills.
Good IT literacy.
Sensitive and empathetic approach.
Good communication skills, and ability to adapt communication styles.
Ability to adapt to a variety of situations that present within calls.
Knowledge and understanding of the impact loneliness and isolation has on older people and their wellbeing.
Experience of working as part of a team.
Calm under pressure.

Great to haves:

Experience of signposting in a helpline environment.
Knowledge of the needs of older people.
Flexible to adapt to meet service demands.
Proficient in data entry and a working knowledge of MS Office applications.
Experience of working and providing support to older people and / or previous experience of providing telephone support within a helpline environment.
Experience of communicating effectively with vulnerable older people.
Knowledge of safeguarding.

What we offer in return

• Competitive salary, 26 days annual leave + bank holidays + annual leave purchase scheme
• Excellent pension scheme, life assurance, health cashback plan and EAP
• Car Benefit Scheme, Cycle to Work Scheme and Season Ticket Loan
• Techscheme - buy any tech from Apple or Currys, up to £1000, and spread the cost over 12 months, interest free
• Blue Light Card Scheme
• You Did It Awards - recognition awards from £100-250.

Additional Information

All CVs will be anonymised by our recruitment system when you apply for a role at Age UK. Please note that our system is unable to anonymise cover letters, and we would therefore ask that to support the work we are doing on making our recruitment selection process fairer and more unbiased, that you remove any personal information from your cover letter/supporting statement, including your name before uploading this. All equalities monitoring information is also anonymised and not shared with the hiring panel. Your name and address will only be known to us once you are invited for an interview.

Age UK is an Equal Opportunities employer and positively encourages applications from suitably qualified and eligible candidates, regardless of age, sex, race, disability, sexual orientation, gender reassignment, religion or belief, marital/civil partnership status, or pregnancy and maternity. We guarantee an interview to disabled candidates who meet the minimum criteria under the Disability Confident Scheme. Please note that on occasion, due to high numbers of applications, Age UK reserves the right to limit the overall number of interviews offered, and therefore, it may not always be practicable or appropriate to interview all disabled people that meet the minimum criteria for the job.

Age UK is committed to safeguarding adults at risk, and children, from abuse and neglect. We expect everyone who works with us to share this commitment.

Early application is encouraged as we will review applications throughout the advertising period and reserve the right to close the advert at any time.

Age UK politely requests no contact from recruitment agencies or media sales. We do not accept speculative CVs from recruitment agencies nor accept the fees associated with them.