11 December 2007

Pubes are fully sick ...

| Ari
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… according to the latest figures from the Public Service Commission.

Apart from wasting staggering amounts of time posting on the-RiotACT, our public servants are at the top of the league table for taking sickies.

And the worst offenders are the ATO, DVA and the ABS, with their staff taking a median of 14 to 17 days off each year.

Perhaps the after-effects of too much coffee?

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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.

Vic Bitterman9:54 pm 11 Dec 07

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.

pubes with poor work ethics? just showing up to work their 7.5 hours a day and get paid? this is a headline in itself..

20% per day on Monday and Friday.

That means 20% on Tuesday
20% on Wednesday
20% on Thursday.

= 100%

Yep. Definitely showing Mondayitis.

It’s also the median figure, meaning a lot of workers are taking off much more than that.

Wow, that is a staggeringly high figure. That is one sick day every 3-4 weeks. I’ve barely taken 3-4 sick days in the last year.

It gets oh so much worse: 40% of all sick days that are taken in a standard working week happen on a monday or friday. 40%!!! This is obviously rorting and all sick leave must be immediately abolished.

These figurers aren’t only sick days…they include personal leave, including bereavement leave, carers leave etc. Another media beat up!

i’d be interested to see some statistics on private sector sickie rates.

Most departments have a max of 10 days sick leave (mine is 8 days) a year without a medical certificate, so these people would have to be fronting up to the doctor sometime with a legitimate sickie.

I would be interested to see a breakdown of sick leave days with & without medical cert, also sick leave against days of the week (I bet Monday & Friday are higher 🙂

Wow! That’s heaps!! Is this just personal sick leave? Over the last year (which was a bad one for me) I took 7 personal sick days, and 5 days carers leave (my wife and I share the carers leave between us for the two kidlets).

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