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- WeAreHuman@Work | #026 | Everyone’s Motivated—But Do You Know By What?
WeAreHuman@Work | #026 | Everyone’s Motivated—But Do You Know By What?
WeAreHuman@Work is a newsletter dedicated to fostering a more sustainable world of work.
Tanguy Dulac
May 25, 2025
THIS WEEK'S CONTENT
Deloitte’s 2025 Global Human Capital Trends report is here—one of my favourite annual reads.
Over the next eight weeks, I’ll break down each trend into actionable insights for leaders navigating uncertainty and transformation.
This week: Trend #6: What Moves Your People? Tapping Into Motivation at the Unit of One
Below is the executive summary and a few hand-picked resources to help you go deeper.
🔍 ZOOM IN
What moves your people? Tapping into motivation at the unit of one | Trend #6 from 2025 Global Human Capital Trends | Deloitte (2025)
What if the secret to performance isn't strategy or systems but understanding what makes each person tick?
This article challenges the one-size-fits-all mindset and reveals why personalising motivation at the individual level—what Deloitte calls “the unit of one”—could unlock untapped workforce potential. With only 33% of workers believing their managers genuinely understand what drives them, the gap between perception and reality is clear. Timely, practical, and provocative, it’s a must-read for any leader ready to elevate performance through purpose-built design.
📊 DID YOU KNOW?
The numbers tell the story: 78% of workers say they know what motivates them—but only 33% believe their managers do. And 60% expect their organisation to increase their motivation to perform.
👀 DID YOU SEE?
The figure below illustrates the diverse motivations driving people to work. This diversity underlines the article’s core argument: individual motivations are complex, evolving, and deeply personal. Recognising and acting on this multiplicity is essential for organisations seeking to move from broad segmentation models to truly personalised engagement strategies at the “unit of one.”
✨ EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
In their article, Nic Scoble-Williams, Sue Cantrell, John Forsythe, Chloe Domergue, and Ben Fish argue that hyper-personalised motivation strategies are the missing link in the human performance equation. Despite personalisation transforming customer experience, most organisations continue to treat employees as homogenous groups—missing critical opportunities to align roles, rewards, and development with individual motivational profiles.
By segmenting workers through generic personas or demographic categories, leaders risk ignoring the fundamental drivers of behaviour. Instead, the authors advocate for motivation at the unit of one: tailoring work experiences to individual aspirations, values, and emotional cues. This shift requires a new organisational mindset that leverages existing data, builds trust, and equips managers to lead as individual motivators.
The article introduces three scalable pathways—manager-driven, modular, and tech-powered—with real-world examples from Johnson & Johnson, Unilever, and others, showing what’s possible when motivation becomes a design principle, not an afterthought.
As Jennifer Hornery, SVP of People & Culture at Cochlear puts it: “By understanding and catering to motivations at the individual level, we can unleash the potential of each person to advance the aspirations and strategic priorities of the business.”
This trend reframes motivation as a strategic lever, not a soft skill—one that enables both high performance and meaningful employee experiences.
🔍 WHY IT MATTERS
↳ Engagement is no longer enough. Employees want to be known—not just seen. Personalisation is now expected, and failing to deliver it risks disengagement, attrition, and underperformance.
↳ One-size-fits-all approaches undermine performance. When organisations apply uniform pathways for growth, rewards, or feedback, they ignore the complexity of human motivation—and miss opportunities to inspire discretionary effort.
↳ Skills without motivation won’t deliver. A worker’s potential is more than their competencies. Even highly skilled individuals may feel misaligned, overlooked, or burned out without clarity on what moves them to act.
↳ Trust and ethics will define success. Hyper-personalisation must be built on transparent data use, employee choice, and clear value exchange—or risk eroding trust in pursuit of insight.
↳ Organisational unity can coexist with personalisation. Tailored experiences need not fragment culture. With shared values and fair processes in place, diverse motivations can drive collective excellence.
💡 KEY INSIGHTS
↳ Most workers are multi-motivated—and evolving. Individuals are rarely driven by one factor alone. 38% of surveyed employees say their primary motivation has shifted in the past three years—underscoring the need for dynamic, responsive approaches.
↳ Current personalisation efforts fall short. While 67% of leaders agree that tailoring work based on individual patterns is essential, only 5% are leading in motivation-based personalisation, and just 17% have efforts underway.
↳ Modular choice is an underused asset. Whether it’s compensation, time, or learning, offering employees meaningful options—like Unilever’s “Future-Fit Plan” or Panasonic’s four-day workweek—can boost autonomy and motivation.
↳ Tech makes individualisation scalable. From behavioural data to neuro-avatar communications, emerging tools allow organisations to personalise quickly and scale—if deployed with integrity.
↳ Workers want it—if it benefits them. A striking 69% of employees are open to sharing more data if it results in tailored experiences and better communication—proving personalisation and privacy coexist.
🚀 ACTIONS FOR LEADERS
↳ Make motivation a standard conversation. Equip managers to explore individual drivers during check-ins, development planning, and performance reviews—not just task completion.
↳ Design flexible, modular choices. Create build-your-own options across compensation, time management, and career paths. Even small shifts in control can fuel intrinsic motivation.
↳ Activate hidden data assets. Many organisations already have motivation-related data—across assessments, feedback, and behaviour logs. Use AI and analytics to connect the dots and generate actionable insights.
↳ Build a motivation-first tech stack. Evaluate your HR systems through a new lens: do they support hyper-personalisation? Can they adapt to the whole person—not just the job?
↳ Lead with transparency. Let employees opt into data collection, explain how insights are used, and visibly return value to them. Trust will be your most significant enabler—or your most significant barrier.
💬 QUESTION FOR THE BOARDROOM
If you know your customer’s favourite coffee order, why don’t your managers understand what motivates their teams?
🔗 CONCLUSION
Skills-based strategies alone will not deliver sustained performance in a world of evolving worker expectations. Deloitte’s authors push us to see beyond roles, personas, and even learning paths—into the unique motivations that move people to act, grow, and lead. By combining empathy, data, and design, organisations can move from performance management to performance enablement. This article shows it doesn’t require massive investments—just intentional shifts and the courage to treat people as people. The future of workforce success depends not just on what people do—but on why they choose to do it with you.
🎯 KEY TAKEAWAY
To unlock human performance, stop designing for averages—start planning for the individual.
📚 READ
Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel H. Pink Drive is a groundbreaking exploration of what truly motivates us at work and beyond. Drawing on cutting-edge research in psychology and behavioral science, Daniel H. Pink challenges the conventional wisdom of carrots and sticks, revealing that the key to sustained motivation lies in autonomy, mastery, and purpose. With engaging storytelling and practical insights, Pink offers a transformative framework for leaders and teams looking to inspire deeper engagement, creativity, and performance. |  |
🎧 TUNE IN
If this trend had an anthem, it would be “Elastic Heart” by Sia.
“I’ve got thick skin and an elastic heart.”
Most organisations still motivate through templates — rewards, engagement models, generational labels.
But motivation doesn’t live in segments. It lives in stories. In stretch. In silence.
This trend calls for a new approach.
Design for the individual, not the persona.
Performance doesn’t come from pressure. It comes from purpose.
Sia gave us the lyric.
Now leaders must recognise the resilience behind every result.
Motivation is a fire from within. If someone else tries to light that fire under you, chances are it will burn very briefly.