A highly motivated staff is key to organizational efficiency and effectiveness. In the modern day trend, non-financial incentives play a pivotal role in attracting and retaining skilled staff both in developed and developing countries. They potentiate a workers inherent motivation. As a consequence, institutions need to ensure that their human resources strategies attract managers with soft skills and not technocrats, as well as, set policies that favor staff development, retention and transfer of skills and experiences. Most developing countries have embarked on health system reform and transformation for varied reasons. The South African experience among others have shown that good principles of management with a focus on leadership would translate policies, structures and systems to desired outcome.