2026 Salary Survey: business services market trends

We’ve covered the current recruitment trends for charity fundraisers, marketers and senior execs so far, but how is the market looking for those delivering their organisation’s services and providing essential support?

Here’s what our specialists had to say in the 2026 Harris Hill Salary Survey (available here).

And so to Business Services, the umbrella under which our Operations, Admin/Support, Data, HR, Projects and Programmes roles huddle, their diminished numbers making it rather less of a squeeze than usual over the last 12 months.

Here, perhaps more than anywhere, application numbers have exploded as vacancies have slumped, putting zero pressure on salaries which have inched up in a vague nod towards inflation but are otherwise unchanged.

What has changed is the make-up of many organisations’ workforce, resulting in a flurry of new vacancies with titles like ‘Head of Team’. However where those teams, in areas like Admin or HR, once comprised 6-7 people at various levels, many of the junior to mid-level roles have been hollowed out, typically leaving teams of just three fairly senior people who can’t remember when they last had time to breathe.

It’s also left many people in these areas out of work, and one of the clearest (and least welcome) trends of the past year is that up to 50% of candidates we hear from are currently unemployed, many having been so for 9 months or more.

That’s no reflection on their capability: many have simply suffered ‘restructuring’, HR’s favoured term for swingeing cuts*, given that it could mean expansion and promotions all round, even if it never, ever does.

*Your challenge for the day: find literally anything else being legitimately described as ‘swingeing’. We’ll wait.

Others have joined the ranks of job-seekers because funding for their programme has been cut, or a policy announcement has made clear that it’s on the cards.

If you’re looking for good news, it’s that the pace of redundancies does appear to have slowed a little in recent months. Just try to look past the likely reason being that there’s precious little left to cut.

The inevitable corollary of all this is that those with jobs have now got several other people’s jobs to do, which in HR for example, means specialist roles in areas like learning and development giving way to broader, generalist roles, while admin teams search for Executive Assistants who can also manage projects or take on operational duties.

This can be a plus for those seeking greater variety or broader experience, but wearing multiple hats at all times risks sidelining in-depth, specialist expertise.

As elsewhere, it can also lead to essay-length job descriptions that, should you ever wish to sleep again, are probably best seen as more of a fantasy wish list than a serious expectation, particularly when coupled with a salary that appears to be channelling a part-time post from 2010.

However, with numbers currently very much on their side, organisations can be tempted to hold out for the rare person who really can tick every box, and with one of those boxes invariably being ‘charity experience’, this excludes even the strongest applicants from other sectors.

This risks shutting out valuable talent, as does the tendency to overlook those whose career path is a patchwork of short-lived positions.

Employers have traditionally frowned on what they see as 'job-hopping', seeing it as evidence of a lack of commitment, and up to 2019 they might (sometimes) have had a point.

But for many people, clinging to one job through Covid and the chaos of the last six years simply hasn't been an option, much as they might have wanted to, making it a rather arbitrary expectation. 

It’s also worth considering the - let’s say ‘irony’, though applicants may have some rather less charitable terms - of insisting on a record of long-term stable employment while in the same breath offering only a one-year contract at best. 

Doing so in 2026 ultimately favours those who’ve already been more fortunate than most, so if that ‘committed to diversity’ pledge means anything, it may be time to rethink that requirement.

For more on the market, including this year's figures across each major department, see the full 2026 Salary Survey here, or for help with recruiting or your charity job search, just contact our specialists, call us on 020 7820 7300 or email info@harrishill.co.uk