About this role
Job summary
This is an exciting opportunity to join our Hospice as a Guest Services Manager. The Guest Services Manager is responsible for overseeing all non-clinical hospitality services within the hospice, ensuring a safe, clean, and welcoming environment for patients, families, visitors, and staff. This includes leadership of catering, housekeeping, laundry, and coffee shop operations, as well as coordination and management of kitchen and service volunteers.
Main duties of the job
This role requires strong leadership, organisational skills, and a commitment to person-centred care, ensuring all services enhance the wellbeing and comfort of those receiving palliative and end-of-life care.
About us
St Cuthberts Hospice provides holistic care for patients with life limiting illnesses. We are highly regarded for our quality of service. Our 10 bedded palliative care In Patient Unit provides individualised care planned to support the total wellbeing of each person, taking into account their physical, psychological, social and spiritual needs. Our Living Well Centre delivers groups and activities to enable people with life limiting illnesses cope better with their health and wellbeing and support them to regain control of their life. We value the contribution of all our workforce comprising of over 90 staff and 395 volunteers. We are an equal opportunities employer and believe in treating everyone with dignity and respect, encouraging applications from all sectors of the community.
Job description Job responsibilities
The Guest Services Manager is responsible for overseeing all non-clinical hospitality services within the hospice, ensuring a safe, clean, and welcoming environment for patients, families, visitors, and staff. This includes leadership of catering, housekeeping, laundry, and coffee shop operations, as well as coordination and management of kitchen and service volunteers.
The postholder will manage teams, maintain service standards, ensure compliance with health, safety, and infection control regulations, and contribute to a positive patient and family experience.
Key responsibilities include the effective operation of food services (including patient meals and coffee shop), maintaining cleanliness and hygiene standards across the hospice, managing laundry services, and leading and supporting volunteers involved in hospitality functions. The Guest Services Manager will also oversee budgets, staffing, training, and continuous service improvement.
This role requires strong leadership, organisational skills, and a commitment to person-centred care, ensuring all services enhance the wellbeing and comfort of those receiving palliative and end-of-life care.
Communicate with patients, staff, visitors, volunteers, carers and external suppliers to ensure effective and efficient delivery of catering and housekeeping functions.
Maintain good working relationships with colleagues to encourage a strong sense of team working throughout the catering and housekeeping teams and functions.
Coordinate the effective deployment of volunteers in the catering team, housekeeping and laundry.
Liaise with external stakeholders such as maintenance engineers and suppliers for matters relating to housekeeping/catering equipment and servicing.
Liaise with Managers in the identification and procurement of equipment and furniture, in line with Hospice policy and procedure.
Liaise with the Estates and Facilities Manager to maintain the fabric of the hospice and required refurbishments for example Living Well Centre (LWC), In-Patient Unit (IPU) and Coffee Shop.
Liaise with County Council and health and safety providers for compliance with legal matters, i.e. environmental health and food safety.
Liaise with clinical colleagues and multidisciplinary team to ensure that the menus and recipes reflect patients nutritional requirements and preferences.
Liaise with clinical colleagues and dietetic and speech and language therapy specialists to meet the needs of patients who require specialist therapeutic diets and/or those with ethnic / cultural dietary requirements.
Plan and co-ordinate the rotas for staff and volunteers in the areas of catering, housekeeping and laundry.
Prioritise own workload, considering the nature of the job.
Ensure that staff rotas are kept up to date using the electronic database (staff care)
Carry out a range of audits in line with the best practice / national standards in food preparation and hygiene and environmental cleanliness.
Implement action plans to rectify any shortfalls on food hygiene / preparation and environmental cleanliness audits for own area of responsibility
Proactively manage catering and housekeeping supplies within budget to ensure continued service delivery and the capacity to meet changing need.
Planning and organisational skills
Manage own time effectively and prioritise own workload.
Regularly liaise with environmental and infection control teams to ensure food hygiene and preparation practice and housekeeping cleaning procedures are appropriate and up to date
Maintain appropriate health and safety audits for catering and housekeeping functions.Set and maintain a professional, clean, and hygienic environment. Allocate cleaning and laundry tasks for each housekeeper and monitor the quality and thoroughness of the work against agreed checklistsPlan, organise and implement deep clean regimes as requiredCoordinate and supervise ancillary services for the Hospice to ensure high standards are maintained for effective and efficient service deliveryAllocate, monitor, and record hours worked by each housekeeper and member of the catering team, using the internal recording system (Staff Care).
Arrange cover for housekeeping and catering services to cover holidays and absences.
An ability to work on your own initiative as well as working with team members. Coordinate and secure adequate volunteer input into catering, coffee shop, and laundry functions. Maintain servicing logs to assure safe and timely servicing of laundry/clinical equipment. E.g. washing machines, driers, hoists, beds, chairs, clinical waste binsMaintain and ensure annual servicing audits are acted on and recorded.
Physical skills
Ability to use and ensure team use catering and housekeeping equipment correctly.
IT/Keyboard skills
Patient/Client Care
Assist patients/relatives with issues relating to catering, housekeeping or related equipment.
Ensure confidentiality is maintained
Policy and Service Development
Comply with and ensure team comply with Hospice policies and procedures by ensuring members are informed of policy and procedural changes and updates.
Propose and discuss any ideas for service development and improvement
Report any incidents/accidents using incident reporting software.
Contribute to review and development of Policies and Procedures which relate to Guest Services e.g. Laundry Policy, Catering Policy
Financial and Physical Resources
Manage the delivery of services within agreed budgets for the purchase of food, cleaning materials, overalls and equipment.
Budget holder for Guest Services.
Negotiate with key contractors and suppliers to ensure we are getting the best value.
Ensure sufficient equipment, uniforms and cleaning materials are supplied and that stock is rotated appropriately to minimise waste and keep within budget. Check invoices and advise suppliers immediately of any discrepancies in weekly stores delivery. Advise manager of any quality issues or increase in cost of products used.
Report as necessary any faults re: equipment or office accommodation and ensure safety and security of the building is met.
Human Resources
Ensure that all housekeeping and catering staff actively contribute to the quality of service provided by the Hospice and communicate effectively with the nursing team.
Responsible for day-to-day management of catering and housekeeping teams
Participate in the recruitment and selection of new staff and volunteers
Attend mandatory training and training courses related to duties of the post
Conduct annual appraisal for key staff and ensure regular 1-1s with catering and housekeeping staff are maintained
Maintain confidentiality in relation to all work matters
Information Resources
Maintain and ensure environmental health and COSHH guidelines are adhered to and applied in all the catering and housekeeping services/activities.
Responsible for the coordination of staff and volunteer rotas within the ancillary services
Research and Development
Continually look for ways to improve the quality of the service provided to guests, patients, visitors, volunteers, and staff.
Contribute to the Clinical Services Annual Audit Schedule where relevant to Guest Services e.g. Infection Prevention and Control Audits
Freedom to ActWork on own initiative in the absence of line Manager
Adopt a flexible approach and use own initiative in the management of workload
Advise line Manager of any difficulties that arise associated with the provision of the service EFFORT & ENVIRONMENT Physical
Required to exert physical effort on occasions when setting up and clearing tables for functions. There is an occasional requirement to exert light physical effort for several long periods during a shift.Mental
Concentration is required when undertaking checklists and records in line with Environmental Health requirements and during the preparation and production of food
There is frequent requirement for concentration for predictable work patterns such as analysing data for cleaning audits, checking detailed documents and invoices and carrying out calculations.
EmotionalOccasional exposure to distressing or emotional circumstances when working on the In-Patient Unit.
Working ConditionsOccasional exposure to heat, humidity and noise as well as exposure to risks entailed in handling very hot foods, kitchen utensils, chemicals and equipment
Take appropriate action to minimise any risks
Data Protection and ConfidentialityAll employees have a responsibility in line with information governance to maintain confidentiality and ensure the principles of the Data Protection Act 1998 are applied to patients, clients, staff, volunteers and Hospice business information, including electronic information. Only information required to fulfil the duties of the role should be accessed by the post holder.
All employees have a responsibility to use electronic systems in a way that preserves the dignity and privacy of people, helps to ensure services of the highest quality, and is compliant with the law and Hospice policies and procedures.
Infection Control
All employees have a responsibility to ensure the risk of infection to themselves, colleagues, patients, relatives and visitors is minimised by: Attending mandatory training and role specific infection prevention education and training
Challenging poor infection prevention and control practices
Ensure their own compliance with Hospice Infection Prevention and Control policies and procedure.Equal Opportunities
The Hospice welcomes all persons without regard to race, religion or belief, age, gender re-assignment, sex, sexual orientation, pregnancy or maternity, marriage, or civil partnership, physical or mental disability. The Hospice aims to provide services in a manner that enables all members of the community to access them.
Person Specification
Experience Essential
Experience of managing or leadingk a catering and/or housekeeping team. Menu planning and ordering provisions within an agreed budget. Strong sense of cost control. Catering / supervising for large numbers for functions.
Desirable
Experience of working with or supervising volunteers. Experience of leading a catering team and working with dietetic and speech and language therapy professionals in preparing meals to meet special dietary requirements. Experience of managing catering services for a range of events. Managing a housekeeping team to meet exacting standards of hygiene in clinical environments.
Qualifications Essential
Experience of managing and delivering hotel/hospitality services. Food hygiene certificate. NCQ level 3 in catering and/or hospitality.
Desirable
Hotel/hospitality services and management qualification. Leading a catering team, (including a coffee shop) and volunteers in promoting and maintaining excellence in food preparation and hygiene. Good knowledge of food safety legislation. Good knowledge of national standards of cleanliness.
Disclosure and Barring Service Check This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.
Employer details Employer name St Cuthbert’s Hospice
Address St. Cuthbert's Hospice
Park House Road
Durham
DH1 3QF
United Kingdom
Employer's website https://www.stcuthbertshospice.com/ (Opens in a new tab)