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Arrow Striping Inc. is a small Lincoln, NE, contractor striping more than 500 parking lots and as many as 18 airports a year, and as President Sue Rottinghaus explains, the company's workers enable that to happen. She says the company makes a special effort to keep workers coming back because it reduces the time required to train and helps productivity. And their efforts seem to be working.

Heath Whitney, who runs crew operations and scheduling and training, says that for the last three years all of the contractor's 15-person company have returned each year, and that has made a significant impact on the company. For one thing, he hasn't had to spend time training new workers.

"A lot of our crew knows what's going on and understands how to get the job done. Most of them can pretty much do everything, and if they can we let them take the reins on a job, doing layout or whatever they want to try," Whitney says. "That means I can branch off and look at other jobs, check the crews and everything they do, and even run my own crew. It just helps everything go smoother."

But the key is to make the employees want to come back each year. And why do they come back?

"Because it's a great place to work," says Linda Anderson, office manager who has been with the company for seven years. "It's a great place and these are great people to work for."