Instead, they are turning to VA agencies – and not the offshore, five-pounds-an-hour kind. They are paying for managed, EU-based executive support that costs less than an in-house hire and starts working in days rather than months.
Having spent several years building a VA agency that works exclusively with CEOs and founders, I have watched this shift accelerate dramatically since 2023. The reasons behind it tell us something important about how the economics of running a UK business have changed.
A competitive EA salary in the UK now sits between £45,000 and £60,000 depending on the city. In London, it pushes higher. Once you add Employer’s National Insurance – which rose again in April 2026 – mandatory pension contributions, equipment, and recruitment fees, the fully loaded cost easily reaches £70,000 to £80,000 annually. That is before you account for the 2-4 months it typically takes to find and onboard the right person.
For a founder managing a £1-5 million business, committing £75,000 per year to a single hire before knowing whether the relationship will work is a significant gamble. And if the hire does not work out, you are back to square one with nothing to show except a few months of mediocre support and an uncomfortable termination process.
Three things converged to make the VA agency model genuinely competitive.
First, remote work stopped being an experiment. Between 2020 and 2023, every founder in the country proved that complex, trust-dependent work could happen effectively without sharing an office. The psychological barrier to remote executive support essentially disappeared.
Second, the EU talent pool became more accessible through agencies, not less. Post-Brexit, directly employing someone in the EU became more complicated. But engaging an EU-based agency through a service agreement remained simple – one invoice, no cross-border employment headaches. For founders who wanted skilled, culturally aligned professionals without the overhead, the agency model became the path of least resistance.
Third, the quality of managed VA services improved substantially. The early virtual assistant industry was dominated by freelancer marketplaces. What has emerged since is fundamentally different. The best VA agencies now recruit, train, and manage executive assistants specifically for founder support, providing account management, quality oversight, and backup coverage. The founder delegates to their EA; the agency manages everything else.
A managed VA agency typically charges £2,000 to £3,000 per month for dedicated part-time executive support – roughly half the monthly cost of a full-time in-house hire, with none of the employment overhead.
But what I hear most from founders is not about the money. It is about speed and flexibility. A founder going through a funding round needs intensive support for 8 weeks, then a lighter touch afterward. An in-house hire cannot flex like that. A founder with three businesses needs someone who can hold the complexity of multiple calendars and stakeholder groups simultaneously – and a pre-trained EA from a specialist agency arrives with frameworks for exactly that.
The virtual executive assistant model – where a remote EA operates as a strategic partner rather than a task follower – has matured to the point where it genuinely competes with in-house hiring on quality, not just cost. VA agencies serving UK founders, such as DonnaPro, have built their entire model around this flexibility, typically offering 60-day trial periods with no contracts – something unthinkable in traditional employment.
Not every founder should use a VA agency. If your business needs 30+ hours of weekly support and you value having someone physically present, an in-house EA remains the right choice. The cultural integration and in-person availability of a dedicated employee are real advantages that remote support cannot fully replicate.
The objection that no longer holds is the trust argument. After years of fully remote working relationships proving their viability across every industry, the concern that a remote assistant cannot handle sensitive information or communicate with investors has largely evaporated. Modern EA agencies enforce GDPR compliance, background checks, and confidentiality agreements as standard – often with more rigour than a typical in-house hiring process.
The trend is not going to reverse. Employment costs in the UK continue to rise. The pool of skilled, English-fluent professionals across the EU remains deep. And founders who have experienced the flexibility of agency-based support rarely go back to the traditional model.
For UK founders weighing this decision right now, the practical advice is straightforward. If you are spending more than 10-15 hours per week on operational tasks, and your business generates enough revenue to invest £2,000-3,000 per month in support, a VA agency like DonnaPro that specialises in UK founder support is a low-risk place to start. Most offer short trial periods, and the upside is substantial. Not just in hours reclaimed, but in the headspace that comes with finally having someone competent handling the work that has been dragging you down.
The founders building the most resilient businesses in the UK right now are not the ones doing everything themselves. They are the ones who figured out, earlier than their competitors, that the smartest use of their time is not managing their inbox.
Read more:
Why More UK Founders Are Turning to VA Agencies Instead of Hiring In-House
