Expand Preventive Maintenance Beyond Your Equipment

My strong sense is that some rental business owners are more in tune with the preventive maintenance needs of their rental fleet than the preventive maintenance of their procedural systems and staff. It's easy to see why rental companies focus heavily on equipment, sometimes at the expense of the rest of their operation. One reason is that in many ways, rental equipment is not as perplexing as employees.

It almost seems normal for employees to wait until something happens for them to react. Instead of re-ordering vital cleaning solvents or rental contracts before the last of the supply is already used, it's common practice for employees to have key supply items such as these completely run out before scrambling to get more. Planning ahead is not a part of every equipment rental company’s culture.

It's not realistic to expect that employees are going to be in the habit of anticipating the needs of your business. They need to be taught. It's unlikely that any of your employees received this type of training before they came to work for you.

Start at the top

Supervisors and other leaders in rental companies also need to be trained to anticipate, not just react. Even though training is certainly one of the keys, perhaps another part of the solution is to have a different system for analyzing and preventing recurring problems. It might sound simple but it does take a concerted effort to analyze the situation and then to implement the proper solutions. Through training, performance reviews, incentives and properly designed job descriptions, managers should become responsible for making sure that certain controllable problems simply don’t occur.

Every day in the rental business brings a supply of challenges. Of course, some of these challenges are the kind that you would think, “Wow, I didn’t see that one coming.” But many of the problems (or challenges) are the repeating variety. It certainly can be maddening to observe the same fires flaring up over and over again. Often, there is far too much fire-fighting.

Keep it positive

It's important to remember that employees need preventive maintenance too. In my opinion, it's important to have a system that rewards employees for achieving higher levels of performance at your company. There are many ways to reward employees and to keep them engaged. In addition to the rewards that have a financial cost, remember the need we all have for verbal positive reinforcement. Some rental business owners and managers tend to use a bit too much of the negative approach with employees, and not enough of the positive, coaching approach.

Even though your company has its own methods to reduce the chances of mistakes happening, these methods might not be enough. It's possible that a more comprehensive system is needed to turn your fire fighters into preventive maintenance experts. Most employees respond well to learning more sophisticated ways to prevent them from looking bad. Look for ways to institutionalize the concept of “let’s fix the problem before it even happens” just like the preventive maintenance program for your rental equipment. Having the business run more smoothly, with fewer mistakes, is not only more satisfying for everyone who works in the company, it also helps the company grow faster and become more profitable.