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The business world is always innovating, looking for new and exciting ways to improve productivity and increase profit margins. For the most part, this innovation is a good thing. It’s innovation that led to the digital revolution, and innovations regarding health and safety have helped to make workplaces better places to be.

However, there are a few current “trends” that are being mislabelled as innovation. Rather than benefiting your business, these trends could actually be doing more harm than good. So before you go switching your business operations, it’s worth considering the full picture on the great business ideas that are actually anything but…

#1 – Employees Not Having Assigned Desk (Hot Desking)

The Idea:  Hot desking is a simple concept that is meant to make the most of resources, which is why companies love it. When hot desking, employees do not have an assigned desk or space. Instead, employees just sit wherever is available when they arrive each day. This trend is incredibly popular, and many businesses have now implemented it.

The Reality:  Employees hate, absolutely hate, hot desking— and unhappy employees make an unhappy business. There’s also little evidence of the increased productivity, or management of resources, that advocates of hot desking claim will occur.

#2 – Micro-Focusing On Business Management

The Idea: Micro-focusing is meant to be the new, exciting way to check your business operations. Rather than viewing your business from an overall perspective, a business owner focuses on tiny minutiae, often dedicating hours to perfecting every small business process in the hope it improves the bigger picture.

The Reality: Businesses need to be able to see the big picture. You need to know, at a glance, how your company is performing financially so you can anticipate revenues; that’s why you need broad accountancy software. You need to be able to see your entire production operation as a complete picture so you can plan for the future; that’s why you need the likes of specialist SAP Business One implementation to assist you. No business process is an island that can be worked on alone; all areas of business influence one another, directly or indirectly, so you have to be able to see the broad spectrum. Micro-focusing taken too far is like trying to improve your data storage by examining the current from the electrical socket.

#3 – Headhunting For Employee Talent

The Idea: If you need to improve an area of your business, headhunters are supposed to be able to supply you with this talent. You sit back and wait for a list of perfect candidates to arrive in your email.

The Reality: A headhunted talent doesn’t know your business; there’s no guarantee that they can transfer their existing skills into your company. It’s far preferable to promote people from within, who know how your company works and how to get the most from it. Your existing permanent employees are your single best resource.

In Conclusion

Innovation is great, but as you can see, innovations can go too far. Sometimes, the best thing for your business is to stick to the established ways– after all, they’ve not served you badly thus far.