How much time do you waste every day on your job?

If you are an average worker, the answer is 2.09 hours per workday, according to a new survey by America Online and Salary.com> The survey shows "that employees are wasting about twice as much time as their employers suspect."

According to Salary.com's calculations, employers spend $759 billion per year on salaries for which real work was expected and not actually performed. That calculates to be $5,720 in wasted salary dollars per year, per worker.

Where's all this time going? Surfing the internet for personal reasons leads the list. Almost 45 percent of more than 10,000 persons polled say this is their number one time-wasting activity. Socializing (23 percent) and conducting personal business (6.8 percent) are numbers two and three on the list. Also, listed are spacing out, running errands, applying for other jobs, planning personal events arriving late/ leaving early.

By the way, the Salary.com survey shows that persons born between the years of 1980 and 1985 waste nearly four times as much time on the job as do those born from 1930 to 1949.

There're Opportunities In These Statistics

These statistics spell O P P O R T U N I T I E S. Just suppose you cut the average time wasted from two hours per day to one hour. That means if you work five days per week, you could easily add five hours a week to your productivity. In a 50-week work year, you would be gaining 250 hours or over 31 eight-hour days of productive time. I have to believe the things you could accomplish in those 31 plus days would certainly show up on the positive side of your annual review and lift you above the average.

Ramon Greenwood

RAMON GREENWOOD

Ramon Greenwood produces a free semi-monthly newsletter providing career advice to those who want to accelerate their careers. Contact him at ramon@commonsenseatwork.com to subscribe.

Those who know Ramon Greenwood and seek his counsel likely to describe him in such terms as "realistic" and"down-to- earth." Most agree with one of his clients who recently said, "He puts his rich and varied lode of experiences to work with an eye to results. He has the ability to make even the most complicated and formidable issues seem less forbidding and more manageable."

Another client declares: "Greenwood has been in the game, in the major leagues, for a long time. He's seen the winners and the losers up close. He knows what makes the difference between the players."

Greenwood's experiences include serving as:

? Senior Career Counselor, Common Sense At Work curently. ? Senior vice president for worldwide communications at American Express; member of the board of directors of American Express Publishing Company, American Express International, Inc. and American Express Foundation. ? Vice president-public affairs Consolidated Foods Corporation (now Sara Lee Corporation).

? Senior public affairs officer, U. S. Department of Transporation, during President Gerald Ford's Administration.

? Author of HOW TO MAKE THE WORLD OF WORK WORK FOR YOU and HOW TO LAND YOUR FIRST JOB. He is co-author of THE NAME OF THE GAME IS LIFE. His writings also have included a syndicated newspaper column, "Common Sense At Work"

? Wave 9 Enterprises, Inc., CEO and director ; Children On The Go, Inc., (chairman of the board and co-founder of this Chicago- based juvenile products company) ; Cranford Johnson Robinson Woods, Inc. (marketing and advertising agency), director; Simmons First National (Banking) Corporation, director and member of the corporate executive committee.

? Management consultant who counsels, speaks and writes on a variety of subjects related to career and business strategies and organizational dynamics.