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Part of A UK ecommerce brand's community manager hire: contract type, pay sources and first 90 days
A UK ecommerce brand's community manager hire: contract type, pay sources and first 90 days
Hiring a community manager for a UK ecommerce brand: contract type, job description, pay evidence in pounds, data and moderation duties and a 90-day check.
What to take away
- Settle contract type before the advertemployee, worker or self-employed contractor. Tax, holiday and notice duties differ.
- Write the job description around outcomes: channels owned, response targets, escalation routes and reporting.
- Set the pay band from live UK vacancy evidence and ONS data, and publish it before interviews. In 2025, UK adverts often show £28,000 to £42,000, with London at £35,000 to £55,000.
- Name one owner for data protection, moderation escalations and advertising approval in the first week.
- Review the hire at 90 days against member outcomes, not activity counts.
Employment status comes before the advert
Hiring a community manager for an online store is a status decision before it is a recruitment decision. Someone working set hours under your direction is normally an employee, with PAYE and statutory holiday. A contractor invoicing for a defined project can sit outside that, but only when the arrangement matches the work.
Employment status decision
Set hours under your direction?
Employee: PAYE and holiday
Contractor: defined project only
Use HMRC's CEST tool to test the working arrangement. It is free, but it asks about control, substitution and financial risk. Covering live chat, order questions and a Facebook group during shop hours looks like employment. A six-week migration with a fixed deliverable looks like a project.
Map the role against the people you already employ, so the advert does not duplicate a social media executive's remit. Our community team roles guide sets out which decisions sit with which role, so read it before you write the advert.
Write the job description around outcomes
Ecommerce community work is mostly product and order questions rather than brand chat. Buyers ask about delivery, sizing, returns and stock, and they expect an answer the same day.
Job description outcomes checklist
- Name each channel and hours covered
- State response and resolution targets in hours
- Set escalation path to customer service, legal, founder
- Describe moderation duties and ban approvals
- List reports produced and how often
Choose the arrangement that fits the work
The right arrangement depends on volume, seasonality and direction.
Arrangement comparison
Employee full time
- Suits
- Daily cover, moderation rota
- Check before advertising
- PAYE, pension, holiday
Employee part time
- Suits
- Low volume or peak cover
- Check before advertising
- Pro rata pay, contracted hours
Fixed-term
- Suits
- Launch, migration, campaign
- Check before advertising
- End date, what happens after
Contractor
- Suits
- Defined project, deliverable
- Check before advertising
- Written scope, tax status, control
Suits
- Employee, full time
- Daily cover of shop channels and a moderation rota
- Employee, part time
- Low volume or peak-season cover
- Fixed-term employee
- A launch, migration or seasonal campaign
- Self-employed contractor
- A defined project with a clear deliverable
- Managed service or agency
- Buying a service without line management
Check before you advertise
- Employee, full time
- PAYE, pension and holiday entitlement
- Employee, part time
- Pro rata pay and contracted hours
- Fixed-term employee
- The end date and what happens afterwards
- Self-employed contractor
- Written scope, tax status and control over how the work is done
- Managed service or agency
- Who the community manager reports to day to day
Whichever you choose, put the scope in writing. Ambiguity resurfaces later as disputes about hours, ownership of the member list and who answers a complaint at 22:00.
Set the pay band from evidence
Start with live UK vacancies for community, social media and customer support roles in your area, and record the date you collected each one. ONS employment and employee types data covers pay and contract types across the labour market.
For pounds, check these sources:
- Indeedfilter by "community manager" and location; adverts in early 2025 often show £26,000 to £40,000 outside London.
- LinkedInsalary insights appear on some adverts; London roles in 2025 commonly list £35,000 to £55,000.
- Glassdooremployer-reported pay ranges for community manager; sample sizes can be small, so treat as a cross-check.
- ReedUK job board with salary filters; use it to count adverts in your region and see part-time hourly rates around £14 to £22.
- Totaljobssalary checker and advertised roles; useful for comparing permanent and fixed-term pay.
- ONS ASHE 2024official earnings data; median full-time pay for marketing associate professionals was about £34,000.
Treat advertised salaries as a range rather than a single rate. A manager covering one channel for a small store sits at the bottom; a multi-market role with line management sits near the top.
Budget for the whole cost, not just salary. From April 2025, employer National Insurance is 15% on pay above £5,000 a year. Pension auto-enrolment adds at least 3% of qualifying earnings. Holiday cover, software seats and training sit on top. Our guide to costing an English community sets out those lines without inventing rates, which helps when finance asks what year one looks like.
Cover data, moderation and advertising before day one
A community manager handles personal data daily: names, order histories, private messages and consent records. The brand is the controller under the UK GDPR, so set clear limits on what the role may copy, export or paste into a spreadsheet. The ICO's advice for small organisations covers the practical baseline.
Moderation carries legal edges too. Where members can post to each other, the Online Safety Act 2023 may apply. The manager needs a written route for illegal content, including who reviews it and how fast.
Advertising approval usually lands with the same person. The advertising codes apply to promotional posts, so agree who signs off product claims and where that approval is recorded.
Check the first 90 days
- Days 1 to 30read six months of complaints, shadow customer service, learn the escalation log.
- Days 31 to 60own one channel, publish weekly numbers and test a single community format.
- Days 61 to 90present a costed plan for the next two quarters, including holiday and absence cover.
Common questions
Is the role a marketing hire or a customer service hire?
It is usually both, and the split should be written down. The role owns the community channels and works with customer service.
What should the first interview test?
Give candidates a real thread from your community and ask how they would reply, moderate and escalate it.
Can a small brand share a manager with an agency?
Yes, with a written scope that names the channels, hours and escalation path. Ask who the person doing the work reports to, and who owns the member data.
