Data by itself is not information. Information is what you get when you study data by some method that makes sense of it.

Graphs can help turn data into information - you can see what is going on better when you see lines going up and down, vs. just numbers in columns.

So try this: study these graphs taken from data in the 1998 A.R.A. Wage & Benefit Survey for an hour or so until they start to reveal some information about these positions in a typical rental company. Every company is different, so you really have to do this on your own. But for starters, here are some observations about the averages displayed in these graphs.

At the top are job titles. The vertical scale on the left shows the percentage of employees who have held that job for the length of time that's displayed across the bottom scale: less than 3 years, 3 to 5 years, 5 to 7 years, 8 to 10 years and 11 years or more.

These graphs are pretty revealing. Take Branch Manager (Fig. 1), for example. You'd expect a branch manager would be a person who has stayed around quite awhile - and in fact, the graph shows that 39 percent of them have been with the company for 11 years or more. But what is interesting is the dip after seven years. A good guess would be that some branch managers have stayed long enough to learn the job well and then have left to take a job at another company, perhaps for more money or benefits, or perhaps for more responsibility in a larger company. In any case, enough branch managers have left to produce this dip on the graph: they've stuck it out steadily for seven years, but only 17 percent are still there after eight to 10 years. What this information tells you is that the average rental company owner stands a good chance of losing branch managers after seven years, just when they are becoming most valuable in their jobs. What would it take to keep them?

The Warehouse Managers (Fig. 3) are a similar case: they're also leaving after the seventh year. But the graph shows one difference: they're not advancing after they reach the three-year mark; instead, they plateau there, and after another four years, they leave.

For both of these key employees, those who stick it out tend to spend a long time with the company: after that seventh-year dip, both of these curves head upward again in the 11th year. Supervisors (Fig. 7) show the same tendency.

Your Counter and yard people (Figs. 8 and 9) and your delivery drivers (Fig. 11, page 37) are just the opposite. Most of them have been with the company less than three years. As time goes on, their time with the company drops off. This may be pretty troubling when you consider the fact that these counter and yard employees are the front-line people who have the most contact with customers on a regular basis. At the 5- to 7-year mark, when the branch managers are hitting their full stride, the counterpeople have dropped to 18 percent; only 9 percent of your counterpeople have been with the company eight to 10 years. This is why training is so crucial at the beginning: it's to make sure all those newcomers know how to satisfy the customer - answer questions, solve problems, see that customers come back the next time they need help. (Three years ago, Rental Management started its Counter & Yard Management section for just this reason: to help fairly inexperienced, front-line employees understand the equipment classifications, applications and markets better, and take a more active part in developing business for the company.)

This graphic information also suggests that rental companies would be wise to provide incentives for experienced counter and yard personnel to stay.

Certainly the same wisdom applies to Mechanics and Maintenance employees (Fig. 10), about 75 percent of whom have been with the company for less than eight years.

Another good guess might be that branch managers and supervisors are inclined toward a career in the company. Only 7 percent of the branch managers, for instance, have been there less than three years, but that percentage doubles in years 3 through 5, to 14 percent, and goes up to 23 percent in years 5 through 7 - just before a bunch of them leave for greener pastures or for whatever other reasons they may have.

Meanwhile, the sales jobs (Figs. 4 and 5) and the Event Planner/Consultant (Fig. 6) don't seem to envision as bright a future, and their tenures continue to decline as time goes on.

Another speculation: these curves may match the degree to which various employees feel a sense of "ownership" in the company, which is more than simply a matter of loyalty. If a valuable and promotable employee sees advancement or long-term reward ahead and if that sense of being "part of" the success and progress of the business - of being regarded as a key member of the team - is reinforced by training, increasing levels of responsibility, encouragement and future promise, it seems predictable - just looking at the Branch Manager and Supervisor models - that such an employee would tend to stay rather than leave.

Of course, money has to be considered. The jobs with the highest rates of departure are also the lowest paying. But money is not the only reason people stay at a company, as Linda Formachelli points out in her story on page 19, and some of these other reasons may offer rental company owners ideas about how to keep those people on the payroll instead of letting them take the knowledge they've learned at your place to somebody else's store - or worse, outside the rental industry altogether. That guy who learned how to solve customers' problems at your rental counter - but never felt appreciated - may be the same guy who waits on you the next time you go into Home Depot.

The 1998 Wage & Benefit Survey revealed that 48 percent of rental companies of all sizes believed that hiring good employees would be their biggest challenge over the next two to three years; 27 percent said their biggest challenge would be retaining good employees. But only 13 percent thought compensation was the top priority.

Interestingly, 49 percent plan to spend more on training and 56 percent plan to increase benefits.

And judging from the information that emerges from these graphs, those companies are clearly on the right track. RM

Editor's Note: This is only a quick glimpse at the matter. The 1998 A.R.A. Wage & Benefit Survey report breaks out the numbers in detail for different types of rental companies.