Something PRIME is coming November 2025!

If you’ve ever sat through a training course or studied Learning and Development, you’ve probably come across Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. It’s been a staple of L&D for decades, appearing in countless presentations, textbooks, and courses. The idea that human needs form a pyramid, progressing from basic survival needs up to self-actualisation, is compelling. But here’s an interesting fact: Maslow never intended it for training.

While his work provides useful insight into human motivation, it wasn’t meant to be a framework for corporate learning and development. Yet, over the years, the L&D profession has adopted and repurposed it to explain learner engagement, motivation, and performance. And while there are elements that make sense – yes, people learn better when they feel safe and supported – the idea that corporate learning follows a strict, hierarchical structure doesn’t hold up in practice.

Real-world training doesn’t follow neat, hierarchical steps. It’s messy, dynamic, and unpredictable.

PRIME started as an idea based around what a trainer-centric version of Maslow’s hierarchy could look like, but as I scribbled ideas down it developed into something more as I wondered could I find a simple framework built specifically for trainers? One that was simple enough to be practical but structured enough to give trainers a solid foundation to work from. A model that didn’t force learning into a rigid hierarchy but instead recognised the realities of the workplace and how people truly engage with training.

The result? The PRIME framework.

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