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Q & A: Jack ZengerMeasuring Up Are your employees as productive as they can be?

By Robert J. McGarvey

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Would you like to double your profits? Outrageous as that goalmight seem, there's a fast way for most businesses todramatically increase profitability: Just tweak workerproductivity. Little gains in productivity turn into big profitsfast, says Jack Zenger, chairman of Times Mirror Training Inc., theworld's largest group of employee training companies (amongthem: Zenger Miller and Learning International). "Increasingproductivity by only 5 percent can increase profits by 50percent," promises Zenger.

Here's how Zenger's arithmetic works: In most companies,costs associated with labor comprise half or more of totalexpenditures. "Assuming the business has a 5 percent return onsales, a 10 percent increase in productivity will doubleprofitability," says Zenger.

That's a realistic goal, too, because productivity in theUnited States has been flat for a quarter century. While expertsdebate why American productivity can't seem to overcome itsplateau, Zenger has no doubt that easy, cheap strategies cantranslate into higher productivity for your company.