Building Porter Job Description 2021 – Salary & Duties

Building Porter Job Description, Salary, Duties

Overview of the job:

A porter is usually interchangeably used for custodian or janitor because a porter does the things they do. We will discuss Building Porter Job Description here. But a building porter’s job falls broader than just being a janitor. To put it simply, a building porter or a team of building porters major concern in running the building clean, neat, and managing errands. One can also call them an all-around office assistant.

A building porter is the first point of contact to the guests and has access to almost everywhere in the building and to all the working employees and executives. It is a responsible job that needs to be done with adaptable skills rather than prior experience. The more adaptable a Porter can be, the more easy and efficient their work can be done. 

To be precise, a building porter is bothered with the physical management of the building. If the company maintains an inventory and brings in the stock, the porter is also concerned with physical stock loading and managing jobs. A porter is an all-rounder for a company to have, that assistant who knows enough to manage multiple jobs. 

Building Porter Job Description

The need for a building porter is evident in any buildings and especially in the corporate. The building porter’s main concern falls into cleanliness. Then they become janitors and make the floors and walls shine. They have to quickly adapt to become the thing they need in the office according to the requirement.

Most Porters are used to maintaining the buildings well. Still, when the time comes, they are messengers, errand runners. They can load or unload stock or make people load them properly, guard the stock, and most importantly, work as a trustworthy staff of the company or building.

Trust and reliability play a key role when one is assumed the role. The porter has more trust in the building than an employee. This has to do with their work and how available they seem to everyone in the building. With the knowledge of using tools and hardware, they can be the perfect all-rounder for a company.

To be explaining it in an idiom, the porter should be a jack of all trades and need not necessarily be a master of everything. The building porter is expected to be aware of what is going around in the building to perform their errands perfectly. But they need not be knowledgeable entirely about how to do the things that happen in the building.

Although such knowledge is entertained, such knowledge is not required for the job of porter. Building porters is the only job where you don’t need to be a master, to begin with. You can master your skill while doing the job, and the mastery is reflected in the career growth and increase in wage.

Qualifications

A porter doesn’t need to be qualified in anything at all. They don’t require formal education, but if one has an education and is still trying to be a porter, they are welcomed. A building porter is a job that needs working experience, and it does build upon while working. If one is aware of hardware and tools to repair, they are most welcomed in the companies.

Qualities of a Building porter, however, have specific requirements. A porter is someone that does a lot of different works, and their works are not the same every day. And the entire building and the look of it are dependent on the porter. It only proves that a porter can only be a person with a lot of patience and physical strength.

While patience is only a key aspect, the other aspects are being communicative and comprehensible. Sense of cleanliness and prior knowledge of cleaning and managing basic clean-ups is welcomed. And as cleanliness only comes after removing the trash, disposing of unnecessary items, the sense of cleanliness is most important for this job. And this sense doesn’t just come from brute training but an innate way to clean things and knowing the way through the trash.

In a building with a warehouse or a separate inventory, a building porter is expected to handle the job of loading, stocking, and managing the stocks. If the porter is expected to be carrying the stock, it is only evident that physical strength or at least the mental capability to think of a way to stock is much needed for the job.

Salary

Building porters are paid quite reasonably for the labor that they commit. They are paid 10-15$ per hour depending on the geography and the nature of the company or building. There are instances of companies paying porters 20-25$ per hour, but that is the case with bigger buildings and bigger responsibilities. The average gross hourly wage falls around 10-15$ because there exist lower payouts too.

Either way, the pay is dependent on three factors. The size of the building or buildings is the most important factor. Because if the area is small and the responsibility is so little, it is only fair for the porter to have lesser wages. The second factor being the number of porters in a team. The third and obvious factor is that through experience, the pay increases according to the position of porter in the team.

The team strength becomes a second factor because it itself depends upon the first factor. If the area is small and too reachable, why would anyone need larger teams? Some buildings run only with one or two porters. And some companies have hundreds of them. The porter’s position is again dependent on the size of the team, making it third.

Career Growth

One must not commit the blunder of assuming any growth in porters. The team of porters has a hierarchy and manage within different positions. One begins as a trainee, becomes one with the team, and can step the ladder up to become the team leader of the porters and can even climb up to the in charge of all the teams.

And as per the career growth, the salary and responsibilities increase too. A building porter is a job that has no specific things to do, while there is always something to do. And these things might add up to the experience and sense of cleanliness and adaptability to the porter helping him/her climb up.

The team of porters can manage an entire building with good supervision. This supervision can only be expected through practice and experience and not theoretical knowledge. A porter’s career growth is proportional to the duration of experience and the mastery in managing all things. The mastery is what makes one a master porter that manages and guides through all the teams.

The Future

One doesn’t need to worry about the future of building porters. The digital era has unlocked a new level of the industrial revolution that sees the rise in buildings and companies. Many start-ups are setting up offices and are continuing to grow in this rapid commercial world.

Every company, regardless of its digital presence, needs to have a physical office. This only proves that the rise in industries and the rise in the necessity of buildings will only mean that there will be a continuous rise in the need for building porters. As long as the industries need buildings, inventory, and stock loading, the building porters will exist. And there is nothing that looks like there will be a decline in them.

Even the robotic revolution cannot replace a building porter. Building porters can help load and stock the robots and even guide the robot to clean and do the job. One needs a porter to reinforce the robot into doing the porter’s job. So, even the AI won’t threaten the porter’s job, and there is only a rise but no decline.

Customer Relationship

The most important aspect that requires a special mention as the basic 101 quality of a building porter is customer relationships. Customer relationship management is definitely a huge thing. It requires special training and course that people learn and educate themselves with.

For a building porter, advanced knowledge of customer relationships is not required, but the skill of managing a customer diplomatically is required. A porter need not be doing the job of convincing a customer to a sale. The sales team will do that. But the porter should be aware enough not to shoo the customer away. Or at least be aware of the building they are working on to help the customer in the minimal possible way.

Conclusion

A building porter is a stressful job to have if one is not aware of is not made for cleaning and being quickly adaptable. The fact that it doesn’t require special education only appeals to mastery in different things. Patience is not everybody’s cup of tea, and without it, a porter is not their cup of tea. Patient, strong, adaptable, and flexible is how a porter is, and that’s how a porter functions through different errands managing the entire building.

Also read What Іѕ A Porter Job?

Building Porter Job Description 2021 – Salary & Duties

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