Organisations centring their operations around human resources, in which skills are instrumental to the attainment of organisational goals, should create a climate to incentivise performance: the returns on any training depend on employee performance. To elicit such performance, organisations may challenge workers’ skills (through complex job design, delegating decision-making, and employee involvement), stimulate motivation (utilising monetary and non-monetary incentives) and create opportunities for employees to make a contribution. The importance of the role of human resources in training provision may not be immediately clear because organisational measures to support employee performance are proximally related to training provision. Variables linked to the importance of human resources are positively associated with the incidence of training and on-the-job training. Part of this association is channelled through job design and the use of incentives. Managerial beliefs about the importance of human resources influence group membership which is associated with the amount of training provision.