To get the best performance (a combination of motivation and capability) from your employees, it is critical that you provide structures and systems (including pay systems) that motivate them at the higher levels.

To understand and predict what these are, you need a very good model or framework describing human motivation.

Only when you have achieved this, it is worth investing time and money in training your employees. If you do it the other way around, not only may your employees not use the new skills acquired in their training but they are more likely to leave the organisation, which means someone else is likely to get all the investment you have made in them.

I encourage you to try Universal Hierarchy of Motivation (UHM). UHM provides the basis for a complete understanding of human motivation so that you can accurately predict what behaviours will result from system or structural changes.

For instance, many people still believe that bonuses make employees work harder and more effectively. Alfie Kohn, a teacher-turned-writer, found that the more you reward a person with grades or incentives, the lower the person’s productivity.

In this context, individuals become less intrinsically motivated. Bonuses (extrinsic motivators) may work for simple tactical work which is easily measured. But they actually reduce people’s performance on complex tasks because they limit individuals’ capacity to fulfil the task by changing their focus to how to get the best bonus.