Operations Assistant

UCSF Health, AG; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 52,000 - 76,000; Full time

Job summary

UCSF Health is seeking an Operations Assistant to promote a safe, respectful environment at the AHP Services Center. You will greet clients, manage front desk duties, handle calls, schedule appointments, and coordinate with clinical staff on safety and incident response.

This role requires strong situational awareness, de-escalation skills, and the ability to maintain composure in dynamic situations while upholding strict confidentiality and professional boundaries.

Qualifications

• High school graduation or equivalent experience; or an equivalent combination of education and experience.
• Minimum two years of experience in safety, security, crisis-response, behavioral de-escalation, or comparable responsibilities in a client-facing environment.
• Experience providing direct service to clients, patients, customers, or the public while maintaining professional boundaries.
• Ability to work respectfully with diverse populations across sexual orientations, gender identities, racial/cultural backgrounds, and socioeconomic circumstances.
• Ability to engage respectfully with individuals facing serious mental health challenges, substance use, housing instability, or other complex health needs.
• Ability to recognize safety concerns and use de-escalation and problem-solving techniques as appropriate.
• Ability to assess situations and determine appropriate safety responses; when to escalate to clinical staff or law enforcement as needed.
• Excellent written and verbal communication; accurate documentation of safety and behavioral incidents.
• Ability to follow safety, confidentiality, and operational procedures; handle sensitive information.

Responsibilities

• Greet and assist clients and visitors at the front desk; provide information and referrals.
• Answer and route telephone calls; schedule appointments.
• Provide reception and client-support functions to ensure safe site operations and access to services.
• Monitor and respond to safety concerns; de-escalate when possible and coordinate with clinical staff as needed.
• Collaborate with on-site leadership to support daily operations and incident response.

Skills

Situational awareness

De-escalation skills

Verbal communication

Professional boundaries

Team collaboration

Judgment under pressure

Documentation skills

Education

High school diploma or equivalent

Tools

EMR systems

Job description

Description & Requirements

Job Description

The Operations Assistant role exists to promote and maintain a safe, respectful, and orderly environment in which clients can access services, and staff can provide those services. The position provides a consistent, visible safety presence at the AHP Services Center, with particular attention to preventing and responding to behavioral escalation, interpersonal conflict, environmental hazards, and other conditions that could affect the safety of clients, visitors, and staff.

The position combines active observation and engagement with verbal de-escalation, conflict resolution, safety rounds, hazard identification, incident response, and coordination with clinical staff, supervisors, emergency personnel, and law enforcement when additional intervention is necessary. The position serves an important preventive function by recognizing emerging concerns, intervening early when appropriate, and helping connect individuals experiencing distress or behavioral escalation with the appropriate staff or resources.

Because the position is located at the front desk, the position also provides reception and client-support functions that contribute to both safe site operations and access to services. These responsibilities include greeting and assisting clients and visitors, answering and routing telephone calls, appointment scheduling, providing information and referrals, and performing limited administrative functions necessary to support clinical operations.

The position requires strong situational awareness, sound judgment, effective verbal de-escalation and communication skills, and the ability to remain calm and responsive in unpredictable or rapidly changing circumstances. The position works collaboratively with clinical, administrative, and on-site leadership staff to support a coordinated approach to client engagement, site safety, incident response, and day-to-day operations.

Qualifications

Required Qualifications

• High school graduation and relevant experience; or an equivalent combination of education and experience appropriate to the position
• Minimum two years of experience performing safety, security, crisis-response, behavioral de-escalation, conflict-resolution, or comparable responsibilities in a client-facing environment
• Experience providing direct service to clients, patients, customers, or members of the public, including the ability to establish rapport while maintaining appropriate professional boundaries
• Demonstrated ability to work respectfully and effectively with people of diverse sexual orientations, gender identities and expressions, racial and cultural backgrounds, and socioeconomic circumstances
• Demonstrated ability to engage respectfully and nonjudgmentally with individuals experiencing serious mental health challenges, substance use, emotional distress, housing instability or homelessness, or other complex health and psychosocial circumstances
• Demonstrated ability to recognize potential safety concerns and signs of behavioral escalation and to use verbal de-escalation, conflict-resolution, redirection, and problem-solving techniques when appropriate
• Ability to assess situations and exercise sound judgment in determining when behavior can be addressed through engagement, redirection, de-escalation, or assistance and when a situation requires a more immediate safety or emergency response
• Ability to communicate site expectations, establish appropriate limits, and respond to challenging or disruptive behavior in a client-centered, respectful, and nonjudgmental manner while maintaining the safety of clients, visitors, and staff
• Demonstrated ability to reestablish rapport and maintain an appropriate professional relationship with clients following conflict, behavioral escalation, redirection, or de-escalation interventions
• Ability to remain calm, observant, and effective in stressful, unpredictable, or rapidly changing situations and to recognize when circumstances exceed the scope of the position and require assistance from clinical staff, supervisors, emergency personnel, or law enforcement
• Excellent verbal, written, telephone, and interpersonal communication skills, including the ability to prepare clear, accurate, objective, and timely documentation of safety and behavioral incidents
• Ability to follow established safety, emergency, confidentiality, and operational procedures and appropriately handle sensitive and confidential information
• Ability to organize and prioritize multiple responsibilities, shift priorities in response to immediate safety needs, and work both independently and collaboratively as part of a multidisciplinary team
• Basic computer proficiency and ability to learn electronic client-record, scheduling, incident-reporting, and other information systems

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience working in a behavioral health, substance use, community health, homeless services, supportive housing, or other community-based health or human-services setting, particularly in emergency, acute psychiatric, inpatient, crisis, or residential programs
• Direct experience working with individuals living with serious mental health conditions, substance use disorders, housing instability or homelessness, and other complex health and social needs
• Experience providing services to LGBTQ+ communities, including transgender and gender-diverse individuals, and people living with or affected by HIV
• Training or demonstrated experience applying harm-reduction, trauma-informed, and client-centered approaches to engagement, behavioral concerns, crisis response, or safety interventions
• Experience performing safety, crisis-response, or de-escalation functions in a behavioral health, healthcare, residential, social-service, or community-based setting in which maintaining ongoing relationships with clients is an important part of the work
• Experience assessing complex or potentially unsafe situations and coordinating an appropriate response with clinical staff, supervisors, emergency medical services, law enforcement, or other responders
• Experience preparing formal incident reports and maintaining safety-related documentation
• Experience with front-desk reception, appointment scheduling, client registration, or healthcare administrative support
• Experience using electronic medical records or other confidential client-information systems
• Current CPR/First Aid certification or ability to obtain and maintain certification as assigned
• Previous UCSF experience
• Bilingual proficiency, particularly Spanish, depending on program needs