Placed over 20,000 business support professionals Placed over 20,000 business support professionals Placed over 20,000 business support professionals 
When an office runs seamlessly, it’s because someone has made that happen. Workplace and Corporate Services leaders are those people – they own the office estate, the operational budgets, the supplier relationships and they lead the teams working quietly in the background.
As firms scale, these roles have taken on genuinely strategic mandates: shaping how businesses run, rather than simply keeping them running. They’re central to driving operational effectiveness and building the infrastructure that lets businesses perform at their best.
It’s a fast-growing and increasingly specialist part of the market, and one we’ve invested in deliberately. Our dedicated Workplace Leadership team was created to serve exactly these roles – Heads of Workplace, Corporate Services and Operations, and Directors of Real Estate and Facilities.
Joss Search spent the past year conducting more than 100 conversations with senior Workplace, Operations and Corporate Services leaders across the London alternative investment market. Four things came through clearly:
Team sizes ranged from a handful of reports to global functions of 60+, but team size tells you very little about the complexity of a role. Two leaders with the same title can be operating at completely different levels.
Much of the work sits between departments rather than inside one. The ability to build trust and join up the business is now every bit as valuable as technical expertise.
Outsourced and third-party delivery is standard, so leaders spend less time managing in-house teams and more time accountable for outcomes delivered through others. We’re also seeing more appetite for interim and fractional solutions.
Most firms have the tools. The harder work is adoption, governance and helping teams find practical use cases – and that’s landing squarely with Workplace Leaders.
These are four of the clearest themes. The full report goes further – compensation benchmarks in full and what’s really driving them
Titles vary widely across the sector but most commonly we see: Head of Workplace, Director of Workplace, Head of Workplace Operations, Head of Corporate Services, Head of Operations, Operations Director, Head of Real Estate & Facilities, Head of Administration, Head of Business Support, Chief of Staff and Office Director.
Title tells you less than you’d think, though. The same remit – global real estate, multi-site operations, a large administrative population – sits under Head of Workplace at one firm and Head of Corporate Services at another. It’s worth looking past the title to the scope underneath.
We recruit across all of them, on a permanent, interim or fractional basis.
Technical workplace and facilities expertise is now assumed rather than differentiating. Across the searches we run and the leaders we spoke to, what firms are actually competing for is commercial fluency, influence without authority, and the ability to deliver through partners rather than direct reports.
Briefs increasingly emphasise budget ownership, supplier negotiation and capital projects. Firms want leaders who can argue what something is worth, not only what it costs.
Many Workplace and Corporate Services leaders operate in highly matrixed environments, delivering results through collaboration and influence rather than formal reporting lines. It’s often the most critical competency clients assess and one of the hardest to evidence on paper.
With leaner internal structures, selecting and holding suppliers to standard has become a core competency rather than a peripheral one.
Leading multi-site workplace and business support teams, ensuring strong performance, career progression, employee retention and a consistent employee experience.
Office moves, systems implementations, acquisition integrations and AI adoption. Leaders who deliver change well are the ones pulled into wider business conversations.
Not building tools, but making sound decisions about them and carrying a team through adoption.
Based on Joss Search’s 2026 research across the London alternative investment market, total compensation for these roles starts from around £150,000 and rises well beyond £300,000 at the top of the market.
Firm size is a surprisingly poor guide. Leaders at smaller and mid-sized firms were often paid at a similar level to peers at far larger ones.
What did track consistently was proximity to business-critical decisions – budget ownership, real estate responsibility, acquisition integration and strategic influence. Geography looked like a driver at first glance, but wider remits tend to be more complex – and it’s the complexity that’s rewarded.
If you’re weighing up an offer, or just wondering where you sit, we’re always happy to talk it through.
We’ve spent 16 years recruiting business support, HR and operations professionals for private equity and alternative investment firms. In that time we’ve watched people we placed early in their careers grow into global workplace and corporate services leadership roles – and we’ve grown with them.
Our Workplace Leadership desk exists because clients kept asking us to hire at this level, and because we only recruit into this sector, we know how these functions are structured, where the good people are and what a competitive offer actually looks like.
We’ve spent the past year talking to leaders across this market, we’re a useful sounding board long before there’s a job spec. What should this role really cover? What’s realistic to expect from one person? How does this compare to what other firms are doing? We talk this through with clients every week, and we’re always open to a conversation about what you’re building.
Ask ten firms and you’ll get ten different answers. Across the leaders we spoke to, remits ranged from a single London office to global portfolios spanning multiple jurisdictions – and the split between workplace, real estate, operations, technology and administrative leadership differed at almost every firm.
Most commonly, the role covers some combination of workplace strategy, real estate and fit-outs, facilities, health and safety, hospitality, front of house, business continuity, supplier management, operational budgets and the leadership of administrative teams. In smaller firms, one person may hold all of it. In larger ones, it’s distributed across specialist teams.
What is consistent is where these leaders sit. They work directly with COOs, CFOs, Partners and Executive Committees, and much of the work falls between departments rather than inside one.
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This is our first dedicated report on Workplace and Corporate Services leadership in alternative investments, drawn from a year of confidential interviews with senior leaders across the London market. It’s designed for anyone benchmarking a package, shaping a role before they hire, or working out where the function is heading next.
The report is free to request.
A Head of Workplace or Head of Corporate Services keeps a firm running day to day – and shapes how it runs as it grows. That covers workplace strategy, real estate and facilities, office operations, health and safety, supplier management and the operational budget, plus leadership of the administrative and support teams. There’s no standard version of this role. The smaller the firm, the wider it tends to stretch – often into technology, HR support and business transformation.
Yes. Joss Search recruits across London, the US and Europe, including multi-region and global remits.
Yes. We’re seeing growing demand for interim and fractional leadership, particularly where firms are going through change and want senior capability without a permanent hire.
Most senior appointments look for a decade or more of workplace, operations or corporate services experience, ideally in a fast-paced professional or financial services environment. Real estate exposure, budget ownership and experience leading teams across sites all strengthen an application considerably.
Base plus bonus is standard, with bonus varying widely by firm and by seniority. Joss Search’s Market Insights Report sets out base, bonus and total compensation benchmarks for the London market. Request your copy here.
Nicola Taylor, our Chief Commercial Officer, or Jasmine Adams, our Head of Client Services, who leads the Workplace Leadership team.
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We are proud to have placed over 10,000 Executive Support roles
