2024 Salary Survey: business services market trends

Among the role-by-role rates you’ll find in our 2024 Salary Survey are those in operations, HR, data, projects, admin and support, central to the day-to-day running of charities and generally making things happen.

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​You can find all the figures via the link above – but for the context behind them, here's what our specialists had to say about the current market for charity professionals in these areas.

Business Services market trends

Although the areas we bundle under ‘Business Services’ are fairly diverse, encompassing most of those who deliver an organisation’s work or provide essential support, there are plenty of commonalities around salary increases, which have slowed down across the board.

Relative to other areas, we haven’t seen organisations combining roles in quite the same numbers (although it certainly happens), but perhaps because many of these roles already have a broad range of responsibilities that require what you might call ‘a very particular set of skills’, before remembering why you don’t do impressions.

Organisations seem well aware that there won’t be a plethora of available candidates fitting the bill, and that shortlists are likely to be exactly that, but most will sooner wait for what they want than raise salaries to get it faster.

That’s why filling these positions requires a proactive approach rather than waiting in vain for applications, so we’ve been delighted to see many organisations raising their candidate-attraction game with better-written job descriptions and more helpful information packs, containing fewer arcane organisational details and more of what candidates actually want to know.

Compatibility matters

Increasingly, that’s also extending to providing interview questions ahead of time, a more inclusive approach that lets employers hear candidates’ considered responses, not what they blurt out on the spot under interview pressure, which tend to give a better indication of what to expect from them day to day.

As we see it, this applicant-friendly approach largely stems from a desire to better understand potential candidates, to hire people who genuinely share their values and who fundamentally want to achieve their mission: a necessary and sustainable source of motivation when, let’s be honest, it’s never going to be the salary.

For their part, candidates are frequently keen to know if there’s any room for movement on that salary – generally not – but they’re increasingly looking at the whole package too: in the last year we’ve heard a lot more questions about other aspects, like the pensions and benefits on offer.

The future of flexibility

As in most areas, employers seem broadly in favour (though not overbearingly so) of more time on site, but feelings vary between different groups.

Those in EA or governance roles remain very keen to stay remote, while others in operations or projects often want and need to be more hands-on.

It’s almost as if grown adults can work out for themselves where they’re most productive, and indeed, it’s become clear that what candidates really want from flexible working isn’t x days on site or at home: it’s the flexibility to decide for themselves where they can best complete their tasks on any given day.

Offer that, and watch a queue of top talent forming outside the office. Or more likely, smartly dressed from the waist up, waiting to join your Zoom call from the tidier side of their kitchen. Ladies, gentlemen and others: the 2020s...

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For the business services figures, as well as those in all other major charity departments, see the full 2024 Salary Survey here, while for help with recruiting or your job search in this field, please contact our specialists:

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