Mar
7
A few tips on how to make things easier for receptionists, security guards, and workplace cleaners
Filed Under Image & Brand, Relationships & Networking
According to Real Simple Magazine, here are a few Little Things You Can Do to Make Someone’s Day…
To Help Receptionists:
- Check in and step away. Receptionists don’t like it when clients park themselves at the front desk and chat on cell phones, says Karen Vassal, a legal receptionist in Naples, Florida, who has been on the job for 22 years. If you have to take any phone calls, take them out in the hall.
- On the phone, speak clearly and identify yourself, says Jennifer Alexander, director of the National Receptionists Association, in Larchmont, New York, and a receptionist for 40 years. Bad cell-phone connections and speaker-phone crackles drive receptionists crazy, too.
- Be polite, be patient, and be personal. “It really makes a difference when people ask, ‘How are you today?’ and take the time to listen to my answer,” says Alexander. Sometimes there is just one person fronting a very busy office. When the receptionist is feeling overworked, personal recognition helps.
To Help Security Guards:
- Be cooperative. Don’t act exasperated — or act out — when a security guard asks you to do something. Instead, just follow the rules. “Understand that this person has a job to do,” says Tony Dandridge, president of Dandridge & Associates, a security firm based in New York City, and a longtime corporate-security consultant. “Security is always the last to leave and the first one there.” The procedures of security personnel are put in place as safeguards.
- Smile and say hello, and a thank-you will always be appreciated. However, always keep the relationship on a professional level, says Dandridge: “We can’t let ourselves get too close. You never know when you’re going to have to escort someone out of the building!”
- Treat the security guard as if he is part of your team. “He’s the solution,” says Dandridge, “not the problem.”
To Help Your Workplace Cleaners:
- Pour liquids down the sink, not into your office trash bin. Liquids leak and make a mess when the cleaner dumps your garbage — then the carpet has to be scrubbed. And so do the cleaner’s clothes.
- Don’t fill your wastebasket with heavy magazines. “They fall right through trash liners and tear them,” says Barbara Henry of Front Royal, Virginia, the Building Service Contractors Association International’s 2007 Custodian of the Year.
- Eliminate guesswork: let the cleaner know what is trash. To prevent dumping stuff by mistake, cleaners generally aren’t allowed to remove random boxes in the vicinity of the wastebasket unless they’re marked as trash.
- Be sure the garbage lands in the can. It’s disrespectful and demeaning to make a cleaner crawl to reach items you could have easily placed in the bin.
