RM Online - Finding good employees remains the top priority

Forty-one percent of employees leave companies because of "limited advancement potential," 25 percent for "lack of recognition,"10 percent because they are unhappy with management and 5 percent because they are bored, according to a USA Today graphic last Nov. 5, titled "Why good workers leave." Another 4 percent said they didn't know why they left. That totals 85 percent. The remaining 15 percent said they left because of low pay or benefits. Fifteen out of a hundred! Take a look at another story in this issue where we analyze some data from the 1998 A.R.A. Wage & Benefit Survey. This information - which is specific to the rental industry - seems to corroborate the general findings that USA Today got from human resources executives around the country.

Despite all the twists and turns that the rental industry has been going through, rental managers still say their No. 1 challenge is finding and keeping good employees - No. 1 - ahead of all the consolidations and new competition from hardware stores and big boxes and manufacturers coming into rent-to-rent and everything. We're devoting the Rental Management cover story this month to a package of human-resources management issues. We came up with so much material that it won't all fit, but keep watching over the months ahead and we'll bring you more.

One fact seems to emerge pretty clearly from the pile: that the best place to look for good people is right inside your own company. So a lot of what we have to report is about how to get the most out of what you already have. But we'll cover all the bases before we're through. This is the management magazine of the rental industry, don't forget.

This month we welcome Arthur H. Bell, professor of Management Communication at the McLaren School of Business, University of San Francisco, to Rental Management's select team of business experts. Art has a Ph.D. in English from Harvard University and is the author or co-author of 37 books on management communication, career skills, language and business strategy. His San Francisco-based consulting firm, Bell Communication Associates, lists TRW, Charles Schwab, Paine Webber, Price-Waterhouse, American Stores, Global Technologies, Lockheed Martin and the U.S. State Department among its clients.