An empty desk in a modern office, a mesh task chair pushed in, evening light from a tall window

Before you advertise

Hiring an office administrator: what it costs, and what the week is spent on

The UK median for this job is £28,294, which costs an employer about £32,450 a year once National Insurance and the minimum pension are added. Whether that is money well spent depends on what the week is actually made of, so this page breaks the job down first.

Last checked 19 September 2026

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.

£28,294

Median salary

ONS ASHE 2025 (provisional), SOC 4159

£32,450

Employment cost a year

Salary, employer NI and minimum pension

£19

Per hour worked

37.5 hour week, 46.4 working weeks

ItemA yearWhere it comes from
Median salary £28,294 ONS ASHE 2025 (provisional), SOC 4159
Employer National Insurance £3,494 15 per cent above £5,000
Minimum workplace pension £662 3 per cent of qualifying earnings
Employment cost £32,450 About £19 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 (9 of 12)

  • Clear the shared inbox and give every message an owner daily

    Sorting by sender, subject and keyword is rules-based.

  • Produce routine paperwork: quotes, order confirmations, letters daily

    Same template, different fields, pulled from a system.

  • Update the CRM or job system after every call and email daily

    Copying known facts into known fields.

  • File documents and hold the naming and folder conventions daily

    A convention is a rule, and the work is applying it consistently.

  • Chase customers and suppliers for missing information daily

    A reminder on a schedule until the field is filled.

  • Book appointments and manage the team diary daily

    Availability, travel time and priority are mostly rules.

  • Build the weekly report by pulling numbers from two or three systems weekly

    Export, paste, format, repeat. The definition never changes.

  • Order supplies and manage the supplier accounts weekly

    Reorder points and a fixed approved list.

  • Keep insurance, certificates and training dates in date monthly

    Expiry dates and reminders are pure rules.

Needs a person (3 of 12)

  • Set up new starters with kit, logins and paperwork monthly

    Chasing several departments and noticing what was missed.

  • Handle the awkward customer email before it becomes a complaint weekly

    Reading tone and deciding how much to concede.

  • Cover reception and the phones when someone is off weekly

    Unpredictable, in person, and different every time.

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:

  1. 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.

  2. 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 trades and installers , accountancy , lettings and property , wholesale , logistics and haulage , cleaning and facilities , legal and care , and the admin around it looks different in each.

A note on the pay figure #

£28,294 is the median for full time employees in SOC 4159, Other administrative occupations n.e.c., from the ONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings, 2025 (provisional). ONS publishes a coefficient of variation with every figure, and this one is 1.2 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.

Questions people ask

What does an office administrator actually cost a year?
At the UK median of £28,294, employer National Insurance adds about £3,494 and the minimum workplace pension about £662, so the employment cost is roughly £32,450 a year before recruitment, equipment, software or cover. That is about £19 for every hour worked on a 37.5 hour week.
What is the median salary for an office administrator in the UK?
£28,294 for full time employees, from the ONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings, 2025 (provisional), under SOC 4159 Other administrative occupations n.e.c.. Half of people in that group earn more and half earn less, and pay in the south of England tends to sit above the national figure.
Which parts of this job follow a fixed pattern?
Of the 12 jobs listed on this page, 9 run to a pattern: clear the shared inbox and give every message an owner, produce routine paperwork: quotes, order confirmations, letters, update the crm or job system after every call and email. That is our reading of the role rather than a measurement of yours, and the only way to know what your version of the job actually looks like is to count a real week.
Should I hire or automate?
Usually both, in that order. Automate the part of the week that runs on rules, then hire for the part that needs a person, because that is the part that is hard to replace and the part people want to do. The mistake is hiring to absorb repeated admin and then discovering the same pressure a year later.

Where these numbers come from

  1. Office for National Statistics, Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings, Table 14.7a Annual pay gross, occupation by four-digit SOC 2020 , read 19 September 2026 . 2025 (provisional) edition, SOC 4159. ONS coefficient of variation 1.2 per cent
  2. GOV.UK, Rates and thresholds for employers 2026 to 2027 , read 19 September 2026
  3. GOV.UK, Workplace pensions: what you, your employer and the government pay , read 19 September 2026
  4. GOV.UK, Holiday entitlement , read 19 September 2026

Last checked 19 September 2026.

Our workings are on the methodology page .

Before you hire

See what an office administrator would spend their week on

Hiring is the right answer for plenty of the work. The audit separates the part that needs a person from the part that runs on rules, so whoever you hire spends their time on the first kind.

Book a free audit Try another free tool

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