What moves people?

May 02, 2023

In April 2021, the United States went through a social phenomenon that was not seen coming due to the uncertain panorama offered by the pandemic; even so, and as usual, life surprised with the now well-known Great Resignation, a fact that managed to break a historical record because Almost four million workers, equivalent to 2.7% of the entire labor force in this country, decided to resign their positions, creating an unprecedented problem for millions of companies that, overnight, saw several decapitalized of your key departments.

Faced with this reality, we allow ourselves to reflect on the importance of analyzing what moves people when making decisions.



It is common to think that salary is the main reason for job desertion in the labor area. However, according to a survey by Revista Empresarial, the salary occupies the last place with 30% while the boss's mistreatment is marked 68%. This percentage allows us to delve into the fact that other types of motivations indeed move people, so we consider it appropriate to discuss the reasons that coexist in everyone's decision-making. According to Juan Antonio Pérez López, who was a professor and General Director of the IESE Business School, he assured that human beings have three types of motivations:

Extrinsic motivation is directly related to external recognition or incentives such as a salary increase or public recognition from your boss for a job well done or good performance.

Intrinsic motivation is the one that drives people to act in a certain way due to the feeling of satisfaction; that is, it makes them feel good, and they think that it brings progress to their person.


The transcendent motivation is where we want to go deeper. However, it is the least common; it is the most powerful since it encourages people to think about the consequences of their actions or, in our words, they think about the purpose of their actions and that, in connection with their interior, they are sure that what they do, they do it because it is the right thing to do.

And it is then where the question becomes relevant, what for? The highest purpose is serving ourselves first, satisfying ourselves to do it well, and doing the right thing for the common good.

Going back to the Great Renunciation, all these people asked themselves these questions knowing the reality that we spend at least 30% of our lives, in the best years of it, in a job, and then this would be what, in coherence, with that purpose of life it did not fit, and that would lead them to make the decision that restricted an entire social situation.

That is why working on recognizing a real purpose in companies that always motivates human resources to give their best, stay, not go back, resist, strengthen, and transform when necessary. Because this transcendent motivation provides happiness to the employee in a proportional direction, breaking down departmental silos and igniting the engine of a collective purpose that will make an entire work team pull in the same direction.