Fractional executive assistant

As many as the brief needs — there is no standard.

Engagements are set either as fixed days (for example Monday, Wednesday and Friday) or as a number of hours flexed around board meetings, travel periods and project deadlines.

One to three days a week, or a set number of hours, both work.

If the work fills a full week, every week, hire full-time.

Seniority and judgement.

A fractional EA should be a senior assistant used to C-suite principals, handling confidential matters, board prep and strategic coordination.

A virtual assistant is typically task-based support — many teams hire an offshore executive assistant or VA for routine admin at lower cost.

The Society of Virtual Assistants’ 2024 survey puts the average UK virtual assistant at £32.35 an hour (specialists £50+).

Fractional EAs cost more but bring judgement and discretion.

Submit a brief with the hours a week and the type of support you need — calendar, travel, board prep, inbox — and the days that must be in person.

We come back with a shortlist of 3–5 senior EAs, vetted through the five stages on how we vet, each with rate, availability and IR35 position set out.

You interview and choose.

Book a meeting to start.

Remote work suits the role: the ONS found 60% of administrative and secretarial workers earning £50,000 or more hybrid-worked in early 2025, so hiring a remote executive assistant — or a fully virtual one — rarely costs you coverage.

It depends on the candidate’s notice and existing clients, so we do not promise a date.

Each candidate on the shortlist has their availability set out, so you can weigh start date against fit before you interview.

Plan a handover from whoever covers the work today.

Usually remote, with in-person days for key meetings, board sessions and events.

Calendar management, travel coordination and communications work well from anywhere, and remote EA roles are now common.

Browse remote EA roles or the dedicated fractional EA board.

You should expect a senior EA who has worked with founders, board members and investors — strategic thinking, discretion with confidential matters and proactive partnership rather than task completion.

That is what our vetting checks: prior EA tenure with senior principals, and references we take ourselves from executives they have supported.

Buying hours rather than a salary is the affordable route.

Lily Shippen’s 2026 survey puts London temporary EA rates at £25–£32 an hour: two days a week across 46 weeks is £17,250–£22,080 a year (our arithmetic).

No source we can cite publishes a fractional EA rate.

A permanent London EA is £50,000–£70,000 (Lily Shippen 2026), and year-one cost runs at about 1.4 times salary.

An executive assistant who works away from your office — from home or anywhere — and joins in person when the work needs it.

“Remote” and “virtual” describe where the EA works; “fractional” describes how much of the week.

Many remote EAs are fractional, and the same person may be advertised as a fractional PA or personal assistant: see the fractional EA and PA page for that distinction.

Give them their own account with delegated access to your inbox and calendar, not your password.

The National Cyber Security Centre advises turning on two-step verification for every user account and using a unique password for each.

Agree in writing what the EA can send or accept in your name and what always comes back to you.

When the engagement ends, remove their access; your own login never changed hands.

What the service includes and in which hours, who the assistant is and what happens when they are away or leave, notice terms, confidentiality and data protection.

Where a provider handles personal data for you, the ICO lists the terms a controller–processor contract must contain — acting only on your documented instructions, confidentiality, security, and deleting or returning the data at the end among them.

If the assistant works from outside the UK, check the ICO’s international transfer rules.

A fractional EA hired through a brief contracts with you directly, and each shortlisted candidate’s IR35 position is set out; check status with HMRC’s CEST tool.

Usually, yes — the words swap order, so an executive virtual assistant, London-based or remote, is the same hire as a virtual executive assistant, and some buyers say online executive assistant for the same arrangement.

What varies is seniority, and executive virtual assistant providers use the labels differently: some supply senior EAs, others task-based virtual assistants.

Ask who the assistant is, which principals they have supported, and whether they will own board prep and confidential matters, as an executive assistant, virtual or in the office, should.

Prior EA tenure with senior principals is what our vetting checks before remote executive assistants reach a shortlist.

An executive administrative assistant supports a senior leader with the diary, correspondence, meetings and records; a remote executive administrative assistant does it away from your office, and a virtual executive administrative assistant, London-based or not, does it entirely online.

In our reading of UK job titles, the role sits between an administrative assistant and an executive assistant: the closer it gets to gatekeeping, board prep and confidential matters, the more it is EA work.

If the load is mostly scheduling and admin at volume, a virtual assistant is usually the better fit; if it needs judgement, brief a fractional EA.

Hiring a virtual executive assistant, London or elsewhere, is worth it when the work needs a senior EA’s judgement but not a full working week.

Compare like with like: Lily Shippen puts the year-one cost of a £55,000 EA at about £76,460 (2026), while two days a week at Lily Shippen’s London temporary rate of £25–£32 an hour comes to £17,250–£22,080 a year across 46 weeks (our arithmetic).

If you can fill five days every week, a full-time hire is the better answer; if the load rises and falls with board cycles and fundraising, paying for the hours you use usually costs less.

For most of the work a remote EA will do: diary, inbox, travel and board packs run from anywhere.

A search for a virtual EA near me is often about someone in the room for board meetings, investor visits and events — a few days a month, not the whole job — and looking only at virtual executive assistants near me narrows the field for the sake of those days.

We shortlist UK-wide, for hybrid or remote engagements: put the in-person days in the brief, and each candidate on the shortlist of 3–5 has their availability set out.

Where the EA lives matters less than which days they must be in the room.

Frame the hire — virtual executive assistant, London board and investor days in person, the rest remote — and an EA based outside London can cover it, with travel for those days agreed up front.

If the need — virtual executive assistant, London-based, able to join meetings at short notice — is real, say so in the brief: it narrows the field, so weigh it against fit.

The published London costs are in the London section.

Often, yes.

An hour a day is a legitimate, lightweight scope: triaging the inbox, keeping the diary straight, confirming travel and chasing the day’s follow-ups.

A one-line brief works — virtual executive assistant, 60 minutes, London hours, remote — followed by the tasks and the time of day you want them done.

If you searched for a virtual executive assistant 60 minutes near me, location matters less than timing: the hour is worked remotely, so what counts is that it lands at the right point in your day.

If the hour regularly includes board or investor work, or keeps running over, it needs a senior EA on more time; if it is routine booking and triage, a virtual assistant may suit better.

Rarely.

A provider’s office address says little about who does the work or where they sit, so a remote executive assistant service near me need not beat one elsewhere.

A remote executive assistant service, London-based or national, delivers the diary, inbox and travel cover remotely either way; compare providers on the contract — who the assistant is, cover when they are away, notice, confidentiality and data protection — as set out under executive assistant services above.

If you need someone in person, write those days into the brief.

It depends on how steady the load is.

If you hire virtual employees — remote staff on your own payroll — you take on an employer’s duties, including employer National Insurance (HMRC) and workplace pension duties.

A freelance or fractional EA contracts with you instead, and employment status turns on how the engagement runs in practice (GOV.UK on employment status).

If the work fills a full week, every week, an employee usually makes sense; if it rises and falls with board cycles and fundraising, a contract usually does.

Partly.

This page is mainly for leaders hiring.

Remote and virtual executive assistant roles from our jobs feed are on the board above; the dedicated fractional EA jobs board carries every fractional EA and PA role we list, and remote fractional jobs covers remote roles across functions.

Published reference points: the Society of Virtual Assistants’ 2024 survey puts the average UK virtual assistant at £32.35 an hour, with specialists at £50 and above; Lily Shippen’s 2026 survey puts London temporary EA rates at £25–£32 an hour.

No source we can cite publishes a fractional EA rate.

The calculator above models a day rate across the year.

Remote and virtual executive assistant roles from our jobs feed are on the board on this page, and the fractional EA jobs board carries every fractional EA and PA role we list.

Virtual executive assistant positions come in several forms — a remote employee, a contractor through your own company, or an assistant working for a VA provider — so check which before you apply: virtual executive assistant employment carries different rights from self-employment (GOV.UK on employment status).

Online executive assistant jobs on task platforms are often VA work; remote executive assistant jobs supporting a named principal are closer to a senior EA seat.

Both kinds can appear on the board on this page: each card shows the location the posting gives, whether remote, hybrid or office-based.

For virtual EA jobs near me in the strict sense — an office you can reach on in-person days — check whether the posting says remote, hybrid or on-site before you apply, and where a remote role can be held from.

Virtual executive assistant jobs near me that are fully remote are in practice open more widely; the fractional EA jobs board and remote fractional jobs list more roles.

No. Browsing the board and applying is free..

No. Roles on the board are across the UK and many are remote or hybrid; each card shows the location the posting gives.

Senior admin work is widely hybrid: the ONS found 60% of administrative and secretarial workers earning £50,000 or more hybrid-worked in early 2025.