If you’ve spent more than 5 minutes working for a large company, you’ll hear talk of something called ‘best practices.’ Companies love doing things according to best practices. In theory, this means they look at what other companies do, figure out which practices work the most effectively, and then they do those things.
Is this how it actually happens? Well, no. In the actual world of work, when companies perform ‘best practices’ they just do what everyone else does. They look at what most other companies do, and then they do it, too. They do it when it works effectively, and they do it when it doesn’t work effectively.
But why does it go like this? Lots of companies don’t want to take risks. Plus, they put many of these decisions into the hands of HR, which is traditionally a bastion of unoriginal thinking within large companies.
