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.
£31,560
Median salary
ONS ASHE 2025 (provisional), SOC 4122
£36,304
Employment cost a year
Salary, employer NI and minimum pension
£21
Per hour worked
37.5 hour week, 46.4 working weeks
| Item | A year | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Median salary | £31,560 | ONS ASHE 2025 (provisional), SOC 4122 |
| Employer National Insurance | £3,984 | 15 per cent above £5,000 |
| Minimum workplace pension | £760 | 3 per cent of qualifying earnings |
| Employment cost | £36,304 | About £21 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 (7 of 12)
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Collect and check timesheets and overtime weekly
Totals against rotas and contracted hours.
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Enter starters, leavers and contract changes weekly
Fixed fields, fixed effective dates.
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Apply tax code and student loan notices from HMRC weekly
HMRC sends a code, you apply it.
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Submit the Full Payment Submission to HMRC monthly
A file with a deadline.
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Assess auto enrolment and upload pension contributions monthly
Thresholds and percentages published each year.
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Reconcile payroll back to the nominal ledger monthly
A matching exercise with a known answer.
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Produce P45s, P60s and P11Ds monthly
Generated from data already held.
Needs a person (5 of 12)
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Run the payroll and review the gross to net report monthly
Spotting the number that looks wrong before it is paid.
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Process statutory sick, maternity and paternity pay monthly
Eligibility rules meet real situations that do not fit them.
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Apply attachment of earnings orders monthly
Priority and protected earnings have to be got right.
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Answer employee pay queries weekly
People are upset about money and need a person.
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Apply the new rates and thresholds each April monthly
Knowing which changes affect this payroll.
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 accountancy , care , logistics and haulage , cleaning and facilities , recruitment and schools , and the admin around it looks different in each.
A note on the pay figure #
£31,560 is the median for full time employees in SOC 4122, Book-keepers, payroll managers and wages clerks, from the ONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings, 2025 (provisional). ONS publishes a coefficient of variation with every figure, and this one is 2.1 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.