Pubes are fully sick ...

Oh yeah, I love those heroes who come in, cough all over everything, and 2 days later, everyone else has got it.

I also love people who use their “personal leave” constantly for sick kids. They are usually female, have male partners who also have access to the same leave, but somehow, it’s always the female who has to look after the kid. The effect on the workplace can range from inconvenience, to quite serious problems because of multiple unplanned absences.

What the stats don’t say is how many of those sick days are caused by dickheads with a vastly over inflated sense of their own indispenability who insist on bringing in their viruses to share with their coworkers

Thankyou, statistics boy. 🙂

“so the median always seems meaningless to me because you don’t know how high the figures range over and below it.”

The median take out the extreme outliers which can skew an average. For example if one of your staff was really sick (like off for a whole year) then your figures would be:
1,2,4,14,14,14,365
…giving a median of 14, and an average of 59!

I think you will find that the private sector don’t tolerate sickies to the degree that the public sector do. In the UK the public has the highest level of sickies be that the policy makers or local government. Our department has introduced polices whereby you hit 8 days – and unless there is good reason for it ie heart attack etc you get disciplined, you reach that point again within 6 months of the warning you get a written warning and so on. It has been effective – shall we say.

Sounds like it’s time for the APS to tackle this issue.

I think the work at those workplaces is dullish, and long term stuff. So people are less likely to have to struggle in while ill, to meet a deadline.

That said, the ATO used to have unlimited carer’s leave (needed a medical cert, but no limit to the days). It was rorted by a very small number of people, who took enormous amounts of it, so now carer’s leave is rstricted to 5 days a year.

Maybe the working conditions at those ” worst offender” work places are an issue ?
I myself have used more ” personal ” leave in the last 12 months than I have in the previous 5 years since changing departments and not being happy …..
Hence the pending move ….

and whoops that was obviously 7 workers – yes indeed a long time since i was in high school 🙂

it’s been a while since i did maths in high school but i never saw the point of using the median – isn’t it quite misleading?

for example, 5 workers who take the following number of leave days each year:
1,2,4,14,14,14,15

the median of this set is 14 which looks shocking but the average is just over 9. so the median always seems meaningless to me because you don’t know how high the figures range over and below it.

The mob I work for has personal leave targets included in the agency agreement : including those on AWA’s.

If the whole organisation averages more personal leave than whatever the target is, that’s a half a percent less payrise for all!

I think the target is 14 days per person, and everyone gets 20 days personal leave per year.