The 2024 Brook Street Business Professionals salary guide
Business leaders need accurate salary information to recruit and retain the workers they urgently need.
Although working conditions, flexible hours, opportunities for career growth and a recognition of work well done are important factors in giving workers what they want from employment, financial compensation can be a strong motivator to keep workers in their roles and it can still play a role in recruitment. With competition for skilled business admin and support employees remaining high, employers require accurate salary information to make the informed financial decisions that are necessary to support successful retention strategies. The data presented in this report is designed to answer this important need.
The data has been compiled from and cross-referenced with information from: Indeed, Sophie, Innovantage and Jobs Data by Textkernel.
Salary data is shown as national and city averages for specific roles, including time-to-hire. Year-on-year pay comparisons are also available for specific roles.
The salary data that follows is provided as a guide for UK business leaders. It is designed to help them set attractive compensation levels for new or current employees.
While the April ’24 NLW increase to £11.44 per hour for employees aged 21 and above is good news for many of the millions of UK workers who work in low-paying occupations and industries, it could be an economic hazard for some employers.
In April 2023, more than 10.2 million UK employees were working in low-paying occupations, receiving a median pay rate of £10.73 per hour. This was marginally above the £10.42 National Living Wage in force at that time (workers aged 23 and above), but more than £4 per hour less than the UK’s median hourly rate for all workers (£14.90).
The April 2024 increase in the NLW has now lifted minimum pay for all age sectors, taking the headline rate for workers aged 21 and above to £11.44 per hour. Across-the-board increases are designed to keep the NLW in line with government targets of at least two thirds of UK median hourly pay.
New National Living Wage rates – effective 1 April 2024
NMW Rate
Annual Increase (£)
Annual Increase (per cent)
National Living Wage (for those aged 21 & over)
£11.44
1.02
9.8
21-22 Year Old Rate
See NLW
1.26
12.4
18-20 Year Old Rate
£8.60
1.11
14.8
16-17 Year Old Rate
£6.40
1.12
21.2
Apprentice Rate
Accommodation Offset
£9.99
0.89
Source: UK Gov
Although it is not common for business administration and support roles to be labelled as low paying occupations, statistics from the UK’s Low Pay Commission (LPC) reveal that significant percentages of employees engaged in office work, non-low paying occupations, contact centres, public service, healthcare and education are paid minimum wage, or no more than £1.50 per hour above it.
These sectors employ large numbers of admin, financial and junior manager staff – workers who are key to maintaining core organisational functions. Increasing the NLW will therefore be good news for thousands of business professionals – and it may have positive impact on staff recruitment and retention. However, for some employers, meeting the additional costs could be problematic. In March 2024, a survey by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) found that despite an overall positive attitude towards NLW increases, some small and medium-sized employers were finding it difficult to absorb the annual increases in the NLW.
Smaller employers also described short-term and unsustainable strategies for absorbing the wage increases, such as using their own time or money to cover the gaps or getting support from family members to sustain business operations despite increasing labour costs.
The NEISR also noted that some small business owners were taking on unsustainable debt or paying themselves below the NLW, whilst others voiced concerns over the safety of operations due to working longer hours or with fewer people working on sites.
Minimum wage jobs can be found in sectors not normally associated with low pay
Although simple in conception, the NLW is complicated by factors such as National Insurance Contributions (employee and employer), personal use deductions and mandatory pension contributions – which also changed in April 2024.
What this means is that while employees may enjoy a gross pay rise of 9.8% or more, businesses will see their costs rise by an even higher amount when accounting for wage, employer NIC and employer pension contribution increases.
How do these extra costs bear out? For NLW workers aged 23 and above and working a 37.5hrs week at £11.44 per hour, the costs to employers have increased by £193.59 per month per employee.
For NLW workers aged 21-23 and working a 37.5hrs week at £11.44 per hour, the costs to employers have increased by £239.24 per month per employee.
Source: Whitings
What’s in a title? As is evidenced by the salary data in this guide, business admin and support roles may have many different titles, but very often they are essentially the same job – with employees carrying out many identical tasks regardless of the title their job is given. However, despite these similarities, different job titles can often generate significant disparities in rates of pay. We can see this in the examples shown here.
According to CIPD, when jobs have different titles with different pay scales but that require many of the same tasks and levels of responsibility[A1] [CG2] , it can create problems for both employees and employers; pathways to pay progression become lost, role demarcation levels become blurred, seniority loses some of its value, and organisational loyalty and role longevity may be affected. Common outcomes are elevated attrition rates and increased employee dissatisfaction. Structuring pay levels to reflect differences between ostensibly similar roles is essential to avoid these unwelcome situations.
Bookkeeper: £27,715
Accounting Assistant: £24,858 (10.3% less)
Sales Ledger Clerk: £28,004
Purchase Ledger Clerk: £25,342 (9.5% less)
Executive Assistant: £31,771
Personal Assistant: £28,350 (10.8% less)
Companies give each employee a pre-determined pay range based on their individual job role.
Entire companies operate on the same incremental pay structure.
A combination of the above pay structures. Group similar roles that fall within the same department, but pay increases are determined based on experience and knowledge.
Pay structures give a framework for wage progression. They can also help encourage appropriate behaviours and performance. Pay progression describes how employees can increase their pay either within or outside a pay structure.
67% of UK employees use some form of pay structuring. Although this methodology is more typically found in larger businesses and public services, it can also be successful for small and medium-sized businesses and even start-ups – where defining pay bands and setting clear pathways to pay progression from the first day can build loyalty and eliminate the potential for claims of bias in future pay awards.
A pay structure is a collection of grades, levels or bands linking related jobs within a hierarchy or series. The structure provides a framework that is designed to:
Align the reward strategy with an employer’s mission, vision, purpose, culture and business strategy, by encouraging required behaviours and performance
Bring order and clarity in managing pay rises and career development
Help ensure fairness and lawfulness, for example by avoiding pay discrimination.
The benefits of pay structuring for employers:
Control pay progression
Demonstrate transparency and fairness
Increase opportunity to reward outstanding performance
Improve organisational Employer Value Proposition (EVP) – which supports recruitment and retention.
The benefits of pay structuring for employees:
Provides improved clarity for pay potential
Provides attainable goals – which improves performance
Reduces the potential for ‘pay friction’ between colleagues in similar roles.
Since the end of the pandemic and the resulting talent shortage, pay levels for millions of UK workers have become more volatile – inflationary pressures, specific skills demand, regional disparities and a highly mobile workforce have combined to fragment and confuse traditional pay levels in almost every industry. The result is often higher costs and employee turnover rates for businesses.
The fact remains that without a clearly defined compensation structure, it becomes more difficult for employers to push back against unaffordable pay demands and to retain their most valuable workers. Clarity is key to retention and greater pay harmony across any organisation’s workforce. In 2024, business leaders must focus on maintaining a fair balance across roles – structuring compensation to properly reflect skill levels, seniority, loyalty, time-in-role and employee performance.
Before beginning any pay structure design, it is important to understand the basis for any grades or bands being incorporated into the framework. This means weighing up the pros and cons of differing types of structure, including how closely they meet the:
Business needs, including affordability
Organisation's mission, vision and values
Needs and aspirations of existing and potential employees, in a clear and fair way.
Organisations should regularly review the way they structure pay and determine salary progression as economic, political, regulatory and technological contexts change. If existing arrangements can’t adapt to meet employer or employee requirements, alternative approaches will be needed.
