A fractional executive assistant is a senior EA who works with you for an agreed part of each week or month rather than full time. In the UK this typically runs from a few days a month upwards, costs a fraction of a full time salary once employer costs are counted, and suits founders with roughly five to fifteen hours a week of delegable work or a role that is still being defined.
Most founders arrive at fractional support for the same reason. There is clearly enough administrative work to justify help, but not obviously enough to justify a permanent salary, and the prospect of hiring someone then struggling to fill their week is worse than carrying on as you are.
Fractional resolves that by buying capacity rather than headcount. The trade is real: you get senior experience at a portion of the cost, and in exchange you have to be more deliberate about what you hand over and how requests reach the person.
A fractional executive assistant works with you on an agreed allocation, commonly one to three days a week or a set number of days a month, on a rolling arrangement rather than an employment contract. They are not a temp covering a gap and not a task-based virtual assistant taking one-off jobs. The distinguishing feature is ownership: specific areas of your week are theirs, within the hours agreed.
In practice that means the diary is genuinely managed rather than occasionally tidied, the inbox has a triage system that runs whether or not you asked, and the recurring administrative work behind both is gradually documented and automated instead of repeated.
The honest test is a two week log. Write down every task you would happily never do again, roughly how long it took, and whether it recurs. Founders consistently underestimate this: the diary alone, once you count rescheduling, chasing confirmations and preparing for meetings, is usually four to six hours a week.
If the log lands under five hours a week, you probably need better systems more than you need a person. Between five and fifteen, fractional is the right shape. Above fifteen and consistently growing, full time will usually cost less per hour of value delivered.
Comparing a fractional day rate to a full time salary understates the gap considerably. The real comparison is against the fully loaded cost of employment: salary plus employer national insurance, pension contributions, recruitment fees, software licences, equipment, holiday and sick cover, and the management time the role consumes.
For a mid to senior executive assistant in London, the loaded figure is meaningfully above the advertised salary once those are included. Fractional removes most of them, and removes the recruitment risk entirely, because ending a rolling engagement costs notice rather than redundancy.
The instinct is to hand over everything at once, which reliably produces a chaotic first fortnight and a quiet retreat to doing it yourself. Sequence it instead.
Week one is access, context and observation: calendar, shared inbox, password manager, and a written note on how you like things done. Week two the assistant owns the diary outright. Week three the inbox triage rules go live with drafted replies waiting for approval. Week four you pick the first recurring administrative process and it gets mapped and rebuilt so it stops consuming time altogether.
Fractional fails for procedural reasons, not capability ones. The two most common are requests arriving in five different channels, and the assistant being unable to act without checking first. Both are fixable in the first week.
Agree a single intake channel, a written list of decisions they can make without asking, and a fifteen minute standing call at the start of each working day. Then hold a thirty day review against the log you wrote at the start, because that is the only honest measure of whether the arrangement is earning its cost.
Start with the work rather than a number of days. If the diary needs daily attention, the allocation needs enough continuity to cover it. If the main need is weekly reporting and process improvement, a concentrated day can be more effective than small fragments spread across the month.
A useful first brief names the areas owned, the expected response window, and the decisions the assistant can make without checking. That turns a fractional arrangement into a role rather than a collection of spare hours.
Do not wait for a vague feeling that the hire is working. Agree three or four observable measures before the start date. They might include the number of diary decisions made without you, the percentage of inbox items triaged by a set time, and one recurring process documented and improved.
The scorecard is not a productivity contest. It is a way to make the review useful for both sides: what should stay with the assistant, what needs better context, and what is now ready to automate.
How much does a fractional executive assistant cost in the UK? Cost depends on seniority and the days committed, but a fractional arrangement generally lands at a fraction of the fully loaded cost of an equivalent full time hire once employer national insurance, pension, recruitment, software and cover are included. Alvara confirms pricing after a short fit call.
How many days a week should I start with? Most founders start with one or two days a week. That is enough to own the diary and inbox properly, and leaves room to increase once the first automations are live and more work moves across.
Can a fractional EA support more than one person? Yes, and it is common in small teams. It works when the second person's requests come through the same intake channel and the priority order between them is agreed in advance rather than negotiated weekly.
What is the difference between fractional and a virtual assistant? A virtual assistant is usually priced by task or hour and waits to be assigned work. A fractional executive assistant owns defined areas of your week within an agreed allocation and is accountable for outcomes rather than completed tasks.
How quickly can a fractional assistant start? With a matched provider, typically inside two weeks of the first call. Hiring independently, allow three to six weeks for search, interviews and a trial task.
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