How Much Does It Cost to Hire an Executive Assistant in the UK?

Most agencies will not answer this question in public. Ask what an EA costs and you will usually get a call back, a discovery meeting, and a number three weeks later.

Here is the honest version instead.

Hiring an Executive Assistant on a salary of £55,000 will cost your business roughly £76,500 in the first twelve months once employer National Insurance, pension, equipment and recruitment fees are accounted for. As a rule of thumb, budget around 1.4 times the salary for year one.

This article breaks down every component so you can budget properly before you open the role.

Why we are publishing our fees

Recruitment has a transparency problem. Fees are usually quoted late in the process, terms vary from client to client for identical work, and the number tends to arrive once you are already invested. That is not an accident. A percentage is far easier to justify after someone has met a candidate they want to hire.

We would rather do it the other way round. The figures in this article are the ones we work to, published openly, so you can budget before you brief anyone and decide whether we are the right fit before either of us spends time on it.

Treat what follows as a guide rather than a quote. Fees flex with the seniority and complexity of the role, and we confirm the number in writing before you commit to anything.

The four costs that make up an EA hire

There are four, and most businesses only plan for the first one.

1. Salary
2. Employment costs on top of salary
3. Recruitment cost
4. The cost of the vacancy itself

What Executive Assistants are paid in the UK in 2026

The figures below are taken from our 2026 Salary Survey, built on live hiring activity across the UK business support market. These numbers are a guide and are subject to change with the scope of the role.

London

The London median across business support sits at approximately £54,500, with the centre of the market between £50,000 and £69,000 and a meaningful presence above £80,000.

Manchester and the North West

The Manchester median sits at approximately £44,500, with the centre of the market between £40,000 and £49,000.

Rest of the UK

One pattern runs through all three markets. Salaries have held broadly steady, while the scope of these roles has expanded considerably. Business support professionals are absorbing project delivery, stakeholder management and operational ownership that sits well beyond the original boundaries of the job. Budgeting to last year’s number is therefore riskier than it looks, since the role you are advertising is probably bigger than the one you advertised last time.

For the full breakdown by role and region, see our Executive Assistant salary guide.

The costs that sit on top of salary

Salary is not the cost of employment. For the 2026/27 tax year the additions are as follows.

Employer National Insurance. Charged at 15% on earnings above £5,000 a year. On a £55,000 salary that is £7,500. The threshold dropped from £9,100 in April 2025 and is now frozen, so this is a materially larger number than it was two years ago. Eligible businesses can offset up to £10,500 through Employment Allowance.

Pension. The minimum employer contribution is 3% of qualifying earnings, which comes to roughly £1,460 on a £55,000 salary. Many businesses now contribute 5% or more, and candidates do compare.

Equipment and software. Laptop, phone, screen, licences. Budget £1,000 to £1,500 in year one.

Holiday cover. Twenty eight days including bank holidays is the statutory minimum. For an EA supporting a single executive this is an operational cost rather than an accounting one, since somebody has to cover the diary.

On a £55,000 EA, the true annual cost of employment before you have recruited anybody is approximately £64,000.

What recruitment actually costs

Recruitment fees in the business support market typically run from around 17% to 25% of first year salary. Most businesses assume the percentage reflects the quality of the agency. It does not. It reflects how you engage, and specifically how much certainty you give the agency in return.

These percentages are a guide rather than a fixed price list. The exact fee depends on the seniority and complexity of the role, and is always confirmed in writing before you commit.

The counterintuitive part is that the cheapest option is the one that feels like the biggest commitment, and the most expensive option is the one that feels like the safest.

Where a specialist sits in that range

Our fees are often higher than a generalist agency would quote, and it is worth being clear about why rather than pretending otherwise.

A generalist recruiter fills EA and PA roles alongside accountancy, sales, logistics and everything else that comes through the door. We recruit business support and HR, and nothing else. That difference shows up in three places: the network, the judgement, and the failure rate.

The network comes from several streams rather than one. Our name is well established in the business support market, so strong candidates approach us directly. Alongside that we run targeted search, referrals from professionals we have worked with, and an engaged community of EAs, PAs and business support people who stay in touch with us between moves. The result is a shortlist drawn from people who are genuinely considering their next step, rather than whoever happened to answer an advert last week. The judgement is being able to tell you that a specification is unrealistic before you advertise it, or that the salary is several thousand pounds short of what the market will accept. The failure rate is the one that costs the most, and it is the reason the cheapest fee is so often the most expensive hire.

If the fee is the only consideration, a generalist will be cheaper. If the cost of getting this hire wrong is the bigger risk, that is what a specialist fee buys.

Why non exclusive costs you more and delivers less

When four agencies are working the same role, each one has roughly a one in four chance of being paid for the work they do. The consultant running your assignment knows this. They also have a desk full of roles where they have a much better chance of being paid.

The rational response is to spend the deep work on the roles with better odds. Your vacancy gets the quick database search rather than the two days of headhunting, the calls to passive candidates who are not on any job board, and the careful qualification that stops someone dropping out at offer stage. You are not being neglected out of laziness. You are being triaged.

There is a second cost that rarely gets discussed. Four agencies working the same brief means the same strong candidates get four calls about the same job in the same week. That looks disorganised from the candidate’s side, and the best people quietly conclude that the business is scattergun about hiring. In a market where candidates are increasingly rejecting roles that feel poorly defined, that impression is expensive.

Why exclusivity and retainers cost less

Exclusivity gives the agency certainty, so the fee drops and the effort rises. One consultant owns the outcome, the search is run properly, and you get a shortlist rather than a stack of CVs.

A retainer goes further. Payment in stages means the work is funded from the start, so the assignment gets genuine search resource rather than whoever happens to be on the database. This is why retained work carries the lowest percentage despite being the most intensive service.

The guarantee matters more than the percentage. A slightly higher fee with a genuine guarantee behind it protects you far better than a cheaper fee with nothing attached to it. Ask what happens if the person leaves in month three and get the answer in writing. Ours is straightforward: if the hire does not work out within the first 12 weeks, we find you a replacement free of charge.

On a £55,000 EA hired exclusively at 20%, the fee is £11,000.

The cost you are already paying: the open vacancy

This is the cost nobody puts in the budget, and it is usually the largest of the four.

An executive without support does not stop doing the work. They absorb it. Diary management, inbox triage, travel booking, expense reconciliation, meeting preparation, and the constant low level chasing that only happens when somebody owns it. In the businesses we work with, that routinely adds up to the better part of a day every week, and considerably more for a founder or a chief executive with an external facing role.

The useful question is not what that time is worth per hour. It is what that person would otherwise have done with it. A day a week is a client relationship left undeveloped, a board pack written at eleven at night rather than properly, a hiring decision pushed back another fortnight, a partnership conversation that never gets started. None of that appears as a line on the balance sheet. All of it arrives there eventually, through slower revenue, through decisions made under time pressure, and through the shortening of how long your most senior people stay effective.

A month without support is manageable. Three months is a quarter of the year in which your most expensive people are doing your least expensive work, at precisely the point they should be setting direction for the next one.

Slow processes carry their own version of this cost. Extended timelines and delayed feedback are one of the most consistent frustrations candidates report, and strong candidates are rarely available for long. Delay is read as uncertainty rather than diligence, which means a drawn out process does not just cost you time. It costs you the shortlist.

The full picture: a £55,000 EA in year one

Year two drops to approximately £64,000, since the recruitment fee and the equipment cost do not repeat.

Value, and why the cheapest hire rarely delivers it

The figure above assumes the hire works. When it does not, the arithmetic changes sharply.

A business support hire who leaves at month five costs you the salary and employment costs already paid, the recruitment fee if you are outside the guarantee period, the management time spent on onboarding, the disruption to an executive who had just started relying on somebody, and the full cost of running the entire process again. Most of the first year budget has gone and the role is still open.

Value is the word that causes the damage here. In a hiring process, value quietly comes to mean the lowest number available at the moment of decision. That definition works perfectly well for commodities, where what you buy is identical whoever supplies it. It works badly for people, where what you are actually buying is a judgement about how someone will fit a business, and where the quality of that judgement only becomes visible months later.

The two time horizons pull in opposite directions. A few percentage points off a fee is a saving you can see this quarter and point to in a board meeting. An EA who stays four years, learns the business properly, and becomes someone the leadership team genuinely relies on is a return that shows up nowhere at all at the point you are negotiating. The first is small and easy to measure. The second is large and almost impossible to.

We see this play out regularly. A client tells us they have found better value elsewhere, which in practice usually means a generalist agency quoting a lower percentage. A number of those clients are back in touch within the year, with the same role open again.

That is not an argument against generalist agencies. There is a genuine place for them, many are very good at what they do, and plenty of those hires work out perfectly well. The point is narrower. A lower fee is a certainty at the moment you accept it, while the quality of the hire is a probability you only find out about later. The two are easy to confuse when only one of them arrives with a number attached.

Engaging a specialist is a decision to back the second one. The point of paying for expertise is not a smoother process. It is a higher probability that the person you hire is still there in year three, operating at a level that makes the original fee look like a rounding error.

The question worth asking any agency is therefore not what they charge. It is how many of the people they placed last year are still in post.

How to reduce the cost without reducing the quality

Go exclusive or retain. Lower fee, faster fill, better shortlist, for the reasons set out above.

Get the brief right before you advertise. Candidates are now far less tolerant of vague job descriptions, and poorly defined roles disproportionately deter the strongest applicants, who have the market awareness to walk away from ambiguity. Time spent defining the role saves weeks later.

Compete on more than salary. Our polling of business support and HR professionals found work life balance was the single most important factor when assessing a role, chosen by 50% of respondents, ahead of salary and package at 27%. Clear scope, realistic hours and genuine flexibility win candidates that money alone does not.

Use temporary cover while you search. A temporary EA removes the vacancy cost while you take the time to hire the permanent person properly. It also lets you test the shape of the role before committing to a salary.

Benchmark honestly. A role advertised below market takes considerably longer to fill, and candidates now arrive at the first conversation already knowing what the role should pay. Our 2026 Salary Survey is free to download and gives you the current ranges by role and region, so you can sense check the budget before you go to market.

Move quickly once you start. Two well designed stages beat four cautious ones.

Frequently asked questions

How much does a recruitment agency charge to find an Executive Assistant?

Between 17% and 25% of first year salary. Retained assignments sit at the lower end, exclusive contingent in the middle, and non exclusive contingent at the top. On a £55,000 EA that is £9,350 to £13,750.

What is the average Executive Assistant salary in the UK?

£50,000 to £70,000 in London, £40,000 to £55,000 in Manchester, and £40,000 to £50,000 across the rest of the UK, according to our 2026 Salary Survey.

How long does it take to hire an Executive Assistant?

Four to six weeks from brief to offer for a well defined role run exclusively. Longer where the specification is unclear or the process runs to more than two stages.

Is it cheaper to hire an EA directly?

The fee is lower and the total cost is often higher, once advertising spend, the hours spent screening unsuitable applications and the risk of a poor hire are included. Direct hiring works well where you already have a strong network for the role.

What happens if the person leaves shortly after starting?

Any agency worth using will stand behind the placement. Ours is a free replacement if the hire does not work out within the first 12 weeks, which means we run the search again at no additional cost to you. Terms vary considerably across the market, so ask for them in writing before you engage.

Budgeting for your next hire

The short version: budget around 1.4 times the salary for year one, engage one agency properly rather than four loosely, and treat the open vacancy as a cost rather than a saving.

If you would like a benchmarked figure for your specific role, market and location, send us the brief and we will come back with a realistic salary range and a clear fee before you commit to anything.

Matt Gregson is Managing Director of Lily Shippen, a specialist recruitment agency placing Executive Assistants, Personal Assistants, Chiefs of Staff and business support professionals across the UK.