Staffing Shortages in the Rental Industry: How to Keep Your Rental Business Running Smoothly with a Short-Handed Team
InTempo Software
The rental industry has been gradually rebounding from the pandemic, with the ARA’s most recent 2021 forecast projecting a 3.5 percent increase in equipment rental revenue over 2020 and continued growth into 2022. However, new challenges have emerged – including one that’s making it particularly difficult for rental businesses to keep up with day-to-day operations: staffing shortages.
These shortages are not exclusive to the rental industry. Companies of all sizes – and across a variety of industries – are finding it difficult to hire new employees. The most recent National Federation of Independent Businesses Monthly Jobs Report found that 50 percent of business owners reported job openings that could not be filled – an increase of one point from July (49 percent) and a 48-year record high. Meanwhile, nearly a third of business owners say they plan to create new jobs in the next few months.
So: what does that mean for local and regional rental businesses?
While some business owners – around 26 percent, according to the NFIB report – plan to raise compensation in the next three months, that isn’t always feasible for rental companies that are already facing high labor costs. That also looks to the future for a potential solution – while day-to-day work still needs to be done now.
Do more with your existing staff – while still setting realistic workloads for current employees.
One of the ways that rental businesses can do more with their current team is to increase efficiency in their current processes. By taking unnecessary or redundant steps out of their most common workflows – or otherwise prioritizing work that’s most crucial for immediate completion – rental owners can empower their current team to complete more tasks in less time. For instance:
- Delivery drivers can capture electronic signatures when they make a delivery, eliminating the need to print contracts and physical paperwork to a customer’s record when they get back to the office. If a customer isn’t onsite at the time of delivery, the driver doesn’t have to wait around for the customer to arrive. Instead, they can email the customer an electronic PDF that they can sign – and automatically add to their rental record – on their own time. In the meantime, the delivery driver can get back on the road and on to their next delivery.
- Service managers can prioritize repairs on equipment that is already reserved or projected to fill an upcoming reservation. Then, as time allows, they can work on machines based on pre-defined availability requirements. (For instance, if the company has 50 scissor lifts in their fleet and 30 need to be available at any given time, their maintenance team can prioritize scissor lifts until the necessary number of machines are rent-ready.) Similarly, they can use telematics data to monitor usage hours and odometer readings, automatically scheduling equipment for preventive maintenance without having to manually track the data.
- Yard staff can complete condition reports on the spot when a machine is checked in, automatically adding photos and documentation to the customer’s record. They don’t have to complete a paper-based condition report in the yard, then go back to the office to re-enter the information into the computer. In the event that the equipment is damaged, they have the photos they need to recover the cost of the repair, without having to waste time debating back and forth with the customer.
Let InTempo help you run your rental business more efficiently.
At InTempo, we understand what it’s like to run a rental business because we’ve done it ourselves. Our team has decades of first-hand experience in the rental industry – from the operations side to the technology side – and we know what it takes to respond to the industry’s most common challenges.
To learn more about the ways InTempo’s rental management software can help you work more efficiently, contact us today.
