Employees Resistant to Change

• Once employees become settled on one formula for success in a business, they may become unwilling to try other methods of doing business. Employees may resist changes that occur in management, major changes to product lines, new marketing strategies and even new inventory tracking systems.
  
  

Ignoring Trends and Forecasting

• Focusing on trends and forecasting can help you make the right decisions for your company's future. By focusing only on what's currently happening in the market, your industry and in the external business environment, you may miss key information about changes that will impact your business. You and your team have to be prepared to handle what's happening today, as well as what may potentially happen tomorrow and years down the line. Complacency can sometimes prevent businesses from being forward-thinking.
  
  

Missing Key Lessons

• With each business decision you make, there's a lesson you or your employees can learn. In order to learn business lessons, you and your team must be open to receiving and processing new information. A team that is fine with conducting business as usual may miss essential opportunities to cut costs, improve customer service or build the business brand.
  
  

Taking Risks

• It's essential that business owners and their employees take calculated risks that have the potential to make a favorable impact on the company. Complacent employees are less likely to take risks, as what they've been doing has thus far produced the desired results. Avoiding risk can prevent a company from hiring new, more skilled employees, expanding a product line to a new market or even making new equipment purchases.
  
  

Strained Relationships

• Complacency can cause employees to strain relationships not only with each other, but with customers, suppliers and vendors as well. Complacent employees may begin to suspect that the company's success is not dependent on other essential aspects of the business. When a fellow employee offers advice for improving the website, for example, the Web designer may insist that the website's traffic is up and sales are up, so there's no need to make a change. A customer service employee may also dismiss customers' criticism of the brand, making the employee less friendly and less willing to remedy a customer's complaint.