Salaries for procurement and commercial roles have increased steadily across the UK construction sector for more than a decade. But despite rising pay, many employees feel worse off than they were 2, 5 or even 10 years ago. Inflation, cost-of-living pressures and travel all contribute to a sense that compensation isn’t keeping pace.
As a hiring manager, you may want to meet every employee’s salary expectations but budget realities often dictate otherwise. So how do you build a high-performing team when the market is demanding more than you can pay?
My experience suggests the most successful organisations focus on three things:
Below is a framework to help you do exactly that.
Step 1 – Benchmark to Stay Realistic
A strong strategy starts with understanding your position in the market. Construction procurement and commercial salaries have been moving by 3–10% annually, depending on seniority and scarcity of skills, so benchmarking should happen annually and potentially even more frequently for hard-to-fill and business critical roles.
It is really important to benchmark total compensation rather than just base salary. Once you account for bonus schemes, car allowances, pension contributions, health benefits, and training budgets, the overall package for many roles is 10–25% higher than base salary alone. This matters, because when candidates understand the full value of what you offer, they often recognise that the total package is a better match for their expectations than the base salary suggested.
It’s also important to work with HR to clarify the strengths and gaps in your employee value proposition (EVP). This becomes the foundation for both negotiation and messaging.
Step 2 – Identify Function-Critical and High-Impact Roles
Most procurement and commercial teams rely on a handful of roles that disproportionately influence business outcomes, for example, major supplier relationship leads, commercial managers on complex packages, or procurement managers running multi-million-pound projects or frameworks.
For jobs where upper-quartile talent makes a disproportionate impact the market is often particularly competitive. Ringfencing budget for these critical roles enables you to:
• Compete credibly for scarce skills
• Maintain delivery capability on key projects
• Offer faster career acceleration, making these roles more attractive to ambitious candidates
In some cases, an internal hire may be the best option and this brings its own benefits. Creating recognised “centres of excellence” within your team not only builds capability but becomes a powerful attraction point for rising stars who want to learn from the best.
Step 3 – Hire for Potential, Not Just Proven Experience
Experience in procurement and commercial roles in the construction sector commands a sometimes steep premium. Targeting ambitious, high-potential candidates who value opportunity, visibility, and development rather than salary alone can offer a way to keep salary costs low while building a high performing team. These ambitious candidates typically value:
• Exposure to major projects or complex supply chains
• Clear progression pathways
• Accelerated responsibility
• Strong internal mentoring and development programmes
Staff turnover among such cohorts will often be relatively high as their value should increase fast; however, if you build a robust development pipeline, this natural turnover becomes a feature—not a failure—of your team design.
To this end, regular 360-degree feedback with salary reviews should help identify who is engaged and who may be at risk of leaving, enabling you to put in place retention strategies that reflect the reality of your talent pipeline.
Step 4 – Sell the Role and the Organisation Effectively
Candidates often focus on base salary because it’s the figure most visible in job adverts and early conversations and because it is the simplest one for hiring managers to communicate.
But helping candidates understand the entire value of the role can transform perceptions of the opportunity. Common buttons to focus on include:
• Full reward package (bonus, car allowance, pension, PMI, flexible working)
• Project significance
• Legacy and complexity of the work
• Career progression trajectories—both internally and for alumni who have gone on to senior roles elsewhere
• Access to suppliers, stakeholders, and decision-makers
Great hiring managers tell a compelling story: why the role matters, how it connects to the project or business strategy, what future opportunities it creates, and why, even without the highest salary, it represents a career-defining move.
Step 5 – Build Room for Negotiation and Use Creativity
Negotiation is part of the hiring or promotion process and candidates often expect it. Viewing pay negotiations as a flexible compensation package, rather than a fixed salary with bolt-ons, gives the hiring manager far more levers to retain and attract talent.
Common approaches to this include:
• Higher salary for fully office/site-based employees
• Salary trade-offs for additional annual leave
• Compressed working weeks
• Enhanced training budgets in lieu of cash
• Clear bonus-triggering objectives to increase earning potential
When you approach the offer as a tailored solution rather than a fixed number, you increase the chances of landing the right person within budget.
While meeting every salary expectation simply isn’t realistic, it is possible to build an exceptional procurement or commercial team by being strategic about where you compete for talent, who you hire, and how you sell the opportunity. With the right benchmarking, clear role prioritisation, a strong EVP, and a little creativity, even budget-constrained teams can attract and retain talent that delivers meaningful impact across the project and the wider business.
Adam has over 20 years’ experience recruiting procurement and commercial professionals across the construction sector.
