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Join for freePosted: Wed 2nd Sep 2026
This Lunch and Learn, led by George Bain, explores how SME business owners can improve productivity and business performance by creating a more motivated and engaged workforce.
The session demonstrates the link between effective leadership, employee motivation, and measurable business outcomes, providing practical ideas that SME leaders can apply within their own organisations.
Understanding motivation
Creating a motivational environment
Leadership requirements
George has over 30 years’ experience in the field of leadership development, operational excellence, cultural transformation, account management development, and global key account management.
He has a passion for developing people based on a fundamental belief that everyone can learn through adopting a growth mindset.
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Lightly edited for clarity.
Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to today's Lunch and Learn. My name is Ryan, and I will be your host today.
For those of you attending Lunch and Learn for the first time, Enterprise Nation is a vibrant community platform for start-ups and small businesses. Today, I'm pleased to introduce George Bain, founder and director of George Bain Consulting.
In this session, George will explore how SME business owners can improve productivity and business performance by creating a more motivated and engaged workforce.
If you've got questions, post them in the chat, and we will do our best to answer them at the end. The webinar is recorded, and a follow-up email will go out later today with the recording and any further resources.
On that note, I will hand over to you, George.
George Bain: Thanks, Ryan. Good afternoon, everybody, and thanks for attending today.
For the next half an hour, I'd like to take you through the principles of how we can improve employee productivity. Without further ado, I'll go to my first slide.
All businesses, whether small, medium, or large enterprises, are working in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous environment. That's always been the case for businesses, whether today or previously, but there's a lot of uncertainty and complexity in the current situation, with factors that may be outside our control affecting businesses large and small.
The macro environment – things happening on a global and local scale – can have an impact on how we do business. Depending on your industry, there could be industry-specific factors at play, as well as supply and value chain issues throughout the whole process.
We also have emerging technologies, and we're using technology today to present this information to you, so we no longer have to be in the same room. AI in particular is very much a focal point moving forward, and it will impact, support, and in some cases even replace some of the things we do.
The other big thing we're finding is that behaviours are changing. Especially since the pandemic, when most of us were forced to work from home, we no longer have to attend an office five days a week, so the way we work has changed as well.
The one thing that always seems to be a problem when I speak to businesses is recruitment and retention – holding on to good people is always a challenge when you're employing staff. That's where we're going to focus a little more.
What we've found, and you may well have heard this before, is that people don't quit a job – they tend to quit a boss or a toxic environment. People who are looking for a good job, or for autonomy and flexibility, tend to leave because they're escaping a toxic culture and the feeling of not being appreciated, along with a lack of company focus on employee health and well-being.
People also want access to opportunities to grow and develop, so they're not just looking for a place of work – they're looking for a career, and for growth within their professional life. Those tend to be the three main reasons people leave work, and it's never about money.
Money is important, in that people need to feel commensurately paid for the work they do, but it's the satisfaction and reward from good, meaningful work that keeps people coming back and engaged in the workplace.
A lot of the theory behind how we manage people stems from well over 100 years ago. Many management theories are tried and tested, but based on old ideas focused on getting the most out of people – things like X-Y theory and systems theory.
It's almost an approach of carrot and stick: we either reward good behaviour, or we have consequences for bad behaviour, which is a form of managing by fear. If people don't do a good job, there are consequences, and that historically was seen as the motivation for turning up to work, being engaged, and committing to the organisation.
There's generally a reward too, to try to incentivise – we've probably all had that carrot dangling in front of us, maybe a bonus, a promotion, or some form of recognition. But there's also a fear that if we don't perform well, we could end up out of work. That's the old way of doing things.
If we look at why people come to work, engage, and produce positive outcomes, we look at motivation theories. The one used most in business, for the last 50 or 60 years, is Maslow's hierarchy of needs, which is based on building blocks for psychological safety – the idea being that once those are in place, we can focus on being the best version of ourselves.
You may well have seen this taught before, but actually it's been disproven, and even Maslow himself started to question his own theory. He said we don't need all the building blocks in place to focus on being the best version of ourselves.
More recently, a new theory has emerged that's very much focused on self-determination – it looks at three psychological needs that must be met for people to be motivated. These fall into three areas: autonomy, competence, and relatedness, which we'll look at in more detail.
We're also talking about engagement – how you get employees engaged and wanting to be the best version of themselves in the workplace – alongside motivation. Engagement and motivation can look very similar, but they're actually different: you can be engaged without being motivated, though it's important we look at both.
On the positive motivation side, we're looking at learning, valuing, and self-belief. On the engagement side, there's planning, task management, and persistence – the positive sides of both. But there's also negative motivation and negative engagement, and it's about differentiating between them.
Put simply, employee engagement serves as the foundation for your employees to do their best work, while motivation is the fuel or energy required to actually do it – the thing that makes us get up in the morning, come and do a day's work, and come back again the next day. It's very much about differentiating the two, though they're intrinsically linked – having one without the other is difficult to achieve, but you need to be able to tell them apart.
If we look at motivation through the lens of self-determination theory, we look at it from two sides: suboptimal motivation and optimal motivation, with a line drawn specifically between them. On the axes, we have psychological needs on one side and self-regulation on the other, both going from low to high quality.
The three below the line – disinterested, external, and imposed motivation – are what we call external factors of motivation, which comes back to the carrot-and-stick approach. These could be things like an incentive or bonus for achieving your work, or a promotion, and they can have the desired effect of motivating people to do things.
Above the line, we have much higher-quality regulation, what we call optimal motivation – aligned, integrated, and inherent. These are intrinsic motivational factors, things that are inherent in us. So when we ask, can you motivate somebody towards optimal motivation, the answer is no – people have to be motivated from within.
These factors can't be influenced by external factors alone. They need to align with the psychological needs we've identified: autonomy, relatedness, and competence. As long as those are satisfied, you have an optimally motivated individual.
We can describe suboptimal motivation as the junk food of motivation – like pizza or McDonald's, which make you feel good for a few minutes or hours afterwards, satisfied for a short time. But that soon wears off, and you go back to feeling not quite as good, and junk food tends to leave you feeling heavy.
Optimal motivation is the healthy food – the good food for us. We also find that when people are motivated – think about this from your own perspective, when you're doing something you really enjoy – not only does your physiological energy go up, but so does your psychological energy. You feel better.
When we're really involved in something, we lose track of time. It no longer feels like half an hour; suddenly we realise we've been working for two hours, and time passes without us noticing, because that's when we're in a moment of optimal motivation.
This is where you tend to be at your best, because you're inherently motivated, and the motivation is aligned and integrated with what you're trying to achieve. That's where we can get the best out of people, when they're working in an optimally motivated state and feel they can give their best.
So, looking at the three psychological needs: the first is autonomy, which we can also call choice. The definition of choice is the innate need of human beings to perceive themselves as the origin, the ongoing source of their own behaviour.
In a work environment, that basically means people want to be in control of their own actions and behaviours within a regulated framework – they clearly know what's acceptable, what they need to do, and they have clear direction and support, but are then allowed to do the tasks themselves. We're not micromanaging people, asking them to do something and then looking over their shoulder, or requiring them to get approval for everything.
People want to be able to make their own choices within the restrictions and requirements of the processes and policies you have in place. As long as people know that, and know they're choosing the right behaviours, they'll feel they have that choice – that's the autonomy factor.
Having seen workplaces and worked within organisations, I know that not all workplaces effectively encourage people's sense of choice, because they restrict it too much and don't allow people that autonomy.
The second need is what we call relatedness, or connection. This breaks down into two factors: connection to the people you work with, and connection to the purpose of the work.
As human beings, we have this need for connection, to feel that we belong within relationships, life, and work. So when people come to work, they feel they're getting meaningful work, and that what they're doing is contributing to the purpose of the organisation.
As the famous story goes, when JFK was touring NASA while they were trying to put a man on the moon back in the sixties, he spoke to a janitor in the space centre and asked what he did. The janitor said he was helping to put a man on the moon. Even though his role, on the surface, was making sure the office spaces were clean and tidy, he knew his connection to the purpose of what they were trying to achieve, and he saw value in what he was doing.
The other side is connection to people – coming back to the same sense of values and behaviours, and working closely with people you can relate to. There are two elements to the relatedness piece, so we need to make sure both are met for people to be motivated.
The final one is what we call competence: we have an innate need to feel effective, and to apply appropriate skills in our ongoing interactions with the environment. In practice, this means people want to be able to demonstrate their skills, feel they're doing a good job, and be growing and developing, as well as achieving their results and outcomes. We want to make sure we're allowing people to grow and develop.
If we go back to why people leave organisations and quit their jobs: it's because, first, they're not getting autonomy, so there's no flexibility – they're being micromanaged in a toxic environment with no connection to the work or the people they're working with, and they feel they don't matter. The final reason is a lack of opportunities to grow and develop – if there's no training or opportunity to further their career within the organisation, that's when people start to look elsewhere.
These are the three psychological needs that need to be met to ensure you have a highly, optimally motivated workforce. If one of those is missing, then your employees' motivation levels will drop, so all three need to be met.
As I said at the beginning, as a business owner or leader of people within an organisation, you cannot motivate individuals directly – you have to create the environment for those people to be motivated within.
The leadership-profit chain, which I refer to a lot when talking to organisations, looks at how you build a very successful organisation. This schematic shows that leadership comes in two types: strategic leadership, where you set the vision, culture, and strategic direction of the organisation, and operational leadership, where you make the day-to-day happen and turn it into results.
What it shows is that if you focus on your employees and get them focused, engaged, and motivated within their work, they'll then look after your customers as best they can, and that will drive business and results. As the arrows show, if you focus on your employees and they give the best customer service they can, that improves the performance and results of the organisation and its vitality.
Strategic leadership doesn't have a direct impact on that vitality – it can set the scene, the direction, and the policies and rules for how to operate – but it's how your employees then come to work that drives the effectiveness of the organisation.
This is a good way of looking at it: focus on your employees, not your customers or the numbers on the dashboard. It's about giving your employees the opportunity to develop and deliver the results you're trying to achieve, and to deliver the customer service that ensures you have devoted customers, who in turn become your biggest advocates and give you free marketing by bringing more business to your door.
We can look at this through a case study. Everybody's probably heard of WD-40 – you've probably got some of the product sitting in your house, shed, or cupboard somewhere. WD-40 is a very successful business, and some people put that down to the product, but there are other products out there that do the same thing.
What we see here is Gary Ridge, the man pictured, who was chairman of the organisation until recently and was CEO for 25 years. He grew the WD-40 business by a 1,369% increase.
He grew it from $300 million back in the late seventies to a net worth of $2.5 billion by 2023 – a 1,369% increase. He achieved this in his tenure without making a single person redundant.
He hasn't made anybody redundant through this period, even through the financial crash of 2008 and the COVID-19 pandemic. He's created a workplace where people feel motivated to come in by focusing on those three psychological needs.
There have been people who've left the organisation over time, because of the normal employee life cycle or people moving away, so there's always going to be that normal attrition. But he's never been in a position where he's had to make anybody redundant within the organisation.
I think that comes down to what that last slide showed, in terms of the leadership-profit chain – he's focused on his employees, and sees them as his most important asset within the organisation. Because he's focused on that, and made sure the environment is created for them to be highly, optimally motivated, the results follow. He's focusing on the right things.
We've also got evidence to support what happens when optimal motivation is in place. Coming back to how you increase employee productivity, results from studies show that when we meet those psychological needs and create optimally motivated individuals, they deliver up to 31% higher productivity.
That's your increase in productivity – almost a third higher than non-optimally motivated individuals, who may well be engaged, committed, and come to work and do things. But those who are optimally motivated give more discretionary effort: they'll stay later, support colleagues, and create a collaborative teamwork environment that delivers those results, up to 31%.
We also see that optimally motivated people demonstrate three times higher creativity on the job. They're not just doing the job – they're thinking about it, being more creative and innovative, and thinking about how to do things better.
People are also 10 times more engaged, so there's that link between motivation and engagement, and, as I say, they give more than a discretionary effort. They're also 40% more likely to receive or be strongly considered for a promotion, reflecting the growth and development people are looking for.
We also see 37% greater sales figures. That comes back to the organisational vitality schematic we showed before: people demonstrate greater outputs, are more effective, bring in greater results, and are three times more satisfied with their jobs.
When you have somebody who's highly satisfied with their work and the organisation they work in, you'll retain good people and good talent. You'll still need to recruit, of course, but more importantly, you'll retain the good people you bring in, which is vital for organisational vitality.
So, as a leader or someone managing a business, how do you create a motivational environment? As I said, you can't motivate individuals directly, but you can create the environment for people to be motivated within, so let's look at what's available.
From the choice side, make sure you give clear direction and guidance, and policies that help people understand what's acceptable behaviour and what's not. Then create the trust for people to get on and do their work without micromanaging them or standing over them all the time.
Make sure people understand their working roles and how meaningful they are, their connection with colleagues and how that relates to the organisation's values, and their sense of purpose – how their role contributes to the bigger picture.
On competence, it's the same: make sure people have the right measures in place, so you're measuring performance, giving people opportunities to learn, and offering clear and available career pathways, along with recognising people and allowing them to grow. Some of this can be done fairly straightforwardly, as quick wins; some will take a little longer, but it's an ongoing process.
As we said, motivated employees are up to 31% more productive – almost a third more. To create that environment, you need to understand the leadership capabilities required to build it.
Leading by example is the first thing you should do: if you demonstrate the behaviours you're looking to achieve, people will follow, and that's the first expectation of any good leader.
Developing a motivational environment takes time, as we said – it doesn't just happen overnight. It's something you need to be consistent with, continue to do, and monitor continuously, because things will change and you may need to adapt and be agile.
Link values to behaviour, and create the right culture for your business. I always say to organisations: your culture is defined by the worst behaviour you're prepared to accept.
If you accept that behaviour, that's the culture you've defined, so make sure the values and behaviour are linked clearly, and that you create the right culture for what you're trying to achieve.
Create a psychologically safe workplace. Allow people to make mistakes, because that's how we learn – don't penalise people for making the wrong decision, because everybody goes in with a positive intent.
As long as they learn from those mistakes and treat it as a learning moment, that's a good way to do it. Encourage people to think outside the box, to think for themselves, and not be afraid of failure.
Then, measure the right things. Are you measuring the right things? Sales numbers and profitability are important, but are they the right things to measure? You should be measuring things that are a byproduct of doing the right things.
As we've said, there's a direct correlation between motivated employees and business results, and that can be demonstrated not just through theory, but through case studies like WD-40, showing how motivating employees delivers results for your organisation.
And that finishes the webinar for today – thank you very much for listening.
Ryan: Amazing. Thank you, George – that was great timing, and really interesting.
Thank you for that – I found that really interesting too. So, a couple of questions, George.
George: Yeah, sure.
Ryan: What would you say are the biggest misconceptions that SME owners have about what motivates their employees?
George: I think the biggest misconception is one I always test – I ask this question whenever I'm running any kind of learning, whether it's one-to-one or in a group: can you motivate people? There's always a split.
Most people think you can, by putting certain things in place. As I said, you can have external factors like bonuses, some kind of reward, a promotion, or recognition, and they're great to have – I'm not saying don't do them – but they're not going to motivate an individual on their own. An individual needs to be motivated internally, so it's about understanding what those needs are.
Even if you've only got one or two employees, if you want to grow your business, you need to understand what those motivating factors are. If you get that right, it's about creating the right environment – not micromanaging people.
The other misconception is around not being afraid of failure. If someone makes a mistake and you come down hard on people for it, that may save you money in the short term, but is that the right environment you're trying to create?
You need to ask, what have we learned from that mistake? Look at it, move forward, and make sure you don't make the same mistake again. Those are probably one or two of the key factors.
Ryan: Brilliant, thank you, George – really helpful. We'll do another one: how can businesses maintain employee motivation during periods of high workload, organisational change, or uncertainty?
George: That's a good question. Well-being is very important – you need to make sure your people aren't burning out, because that's always a big problem, especially if you're a growing business becoming successful with more and more workload, and that pressure builds.
You need to allow people to have that work-life balance, so they get the rest and recuperation they need to handle the pressure. There'll be times when we're all working extremely hard, but be mindful of that too.
Be aware if people are showing signs of struggling or not coping with the workload. Some people won't say anything because they feel it might make them look vulnerable, but there's nothing wrong with that – so be mindful, and allow people time to recoup and recharge.
When it comes to change, it's about communication – keeping people informed all the time. The biggest thing I say when any change activity is happening – and there's always some kind of change going on – is to keep people informed, even if you've got nothing new to tell them.
It's about communication. If you have a communication gap, we as human beings love to fill that void, and it's invariably doom and gloom – we put our own information in there. So you need to keep people well and truly informed, and keep them on board with everything that's happening.
Ryan: Amazing – I think that's such a good point about overcommunicating, isn't it? Just keeping–
George: Oh, absolutely – communicate, communicate, communicate.
Ryan: Amazing, George. Well, that's been really interesting, and we're just on time.
Some really good questions there, and I think a really interesting presentation. I'd recommend anyone connect with George afterwards.
If you've got any follow-on questions, I've popped links in the chat, and the recording will get sent out later. Please do connect with George if you have any further questions or want to discuss it further.
Ryan: Some good feedback there, George – what an excellent session, that's brilliant, thank you.
George: Thanks, that's really kind.
Ryan: Well, thank you to everyone for joining, as always, and thanks again, George – great, really interesting session.
Enjoy the rest of your day and the week, and we'll see you all soon.
George: No problem, thanks a lot. Thank you, everyone. See you later, bye-bye.
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