What the job costs #
Salary is the part everyone quotes and the smallest part of the decision. Here is the employment cost at the national median, using the rates in force for the 2026 to 2027 tax year.
£26,851
Median salary
ONS ASHE 2025 (provisional), SOC 4136
£30,747
Employment cost a year
Salary, employer NI and minimum pension
£18
Per hour worked
37.5 hour week, 46.4 working weeks
| Item | A year | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Median salary | £26,851 | ONS ASHE 2025 (provisional), SOC 4136 |
| Employer National Insurance | £3,278 | 15 per cent above £5,000 |
| Minimum workplace pension | £618 | 3 per cent of qualifying earnings |
| Employment cost | £30,747 | About £18 an hour on a 37.5 hour week |
Recruitment, equipment, software seats, training and cover for holiday and sickness all sit on top, and they vary too much between businesses to put a number on here.
If you want to run your own figures, the true cost of an employee tool does this with your salary, hours and on costs.
What the week is actually made of #
Here is the job as it usually runs in a business, split by whether the work follows a fixed pattern or needs a person to decide something. This split is our analysis, not a survey, and your version of the role will differ.
Runs to a pattern (8 of 12)
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Produce contracts, offer letters and change letters weekly
Templates with merged fields.
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Onboard new starters and set up their records weekly
A checklist across several systems.
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Maintain the HR system and personnel files daily
Structured record keeping.
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Track holiday, sickness and absence triggers daily
Thresholds and automatic flags.
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Remind managers about probations and reviews weekly
Dates and notifications.
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Administer benefits, pensions and salary sacrifice schemes monthly
Enrolment windows and fixed forms.
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Prepare the monthly payroll changes monthly
Collect, check, submit.
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Produce headcount, turnover and absence reports monthly
A standing report.
Needs a person (4 of 12)
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Run pre employment checks and right to work weekly
A legal obligation with fines attached.
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Take minutes at investigation and disciplinary meetings monthly
Accuracy under pressure, and it may be read in a tribunal.
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Answer first line policy questions from staff daily
Applying a policy to a situation it did not anticipate.
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Keep policies and the handbook version controlled monthly
Knowing when the law has moved.
What to do before you advertise #
The question is not whether to hire. It is what the person will be doing on a Tuesday afternoon in March. Two things are worth doing first, and both take less effort than writing the advert:
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Count the week you are about to buy
Write down the jobs this role would pick up, how long each takes and how often it happens. The cost of admin time calculator adds it up and puts a cost on it.
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Separate the pattern from the judgement
If most of the hours sit in the first list above, a hire will absorb the pressure rather than remove it, and the same pressure returns when the business grows again.
Plenty of businesses do both: automate the repeated half, then hire someone to do the half that needs a person, often part time or at a level that keeps them interested. That is a better job than the one the advert usually describes.
Where this role usually sits #
This job turns up most often in care , recruitment , logistics and haulage , cleaning and facilities , accountancy and schools , and the admin around it looks different in each.
A note on the pay figure #
£26,851 is the median for full time employees in SOC 4136, Human resources administrative occupations, from the ONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings, 2025 (provisional). ONS publishes a coefficient of variation with every figure, and this one is 5.2 per cent, which ONS treats as reliable.
It is a national figure covering every employer size and region. What a specific business pays depends on where it is, how specialised the job is, and what else is on offer nearby.