Education & Work Whats your average sickies per year?

Governments need to look internally and reduce this sort of waste before they start looking at tinkering with NG changes etc
This is low hanging fruit that any other business would not tolerate with their staff.
Maybe Darlinghurst Boy is embellishing the true but it is not doubt a culture that unfortunately is wide spread through the public service.

 

Took a lazy 'sick' day whilst on holiday in Argentina about 5 days ago.

Hiked the 5km from El Chalten to this view of Los Torres:



Had a fever due to a head cold so missed out on hiking the last 5 km up to this view that everyone else in the group saw:



So returned to El Chalten and had an Irish Coffee ( purely for medicinal purposes ). Spent the remainder of the day snoozing and battling a slow and unreliable satellite internet connection in the Hostel.

Back on topic, I take 5-10 sick days per year on average. Plenty in the kitty as I have been with my employer for 21 years.

 

This fin year I have had about 2 months off sick due to illness, 1 month of this was voluntary unpaid leave.

Prior to this illness, my last sick day was August 2007.

I don't do sick leave unless I am really sick, I don't have kids and I don't catch public transport, there is not much opportunity for me to get sick in general .

 

I don't do sickies but over the years I have had a few injuries requiring major surgery. Each time I needed 6 weeks or more off work, so 65 days, while high is not inconceivable.
But not every year.

 

It is an entitlement.
Some people have mental healty issues too. They may rely on these days.
If you are working in the private sector then it is all reflected in your career progression etc, someone who works late, value adds to a business vs someone who does the bare minimum and uses lots of sick leave.

I agree that there is much inefficiency in the public sector, sick leave, productivity issues.

It's not a ******* contest to see who has used the LEAST amount of sick days..
Someone else may have generated 1000% times the revenue that you have, is the cornerstone of a solid culture at a business, has developed processes no one else has, but may have some health issues or mental health issues that requires them to use more of the ENTITLED sick/personal leave..

People need to relax a bit!

In the Public Praxtice Accounting profession generally you have an hourly charge out rate. It is based on 48 weeks less public holidays, less sick days x a productivity %. These are the chargeable hours for the year.
So most employers factor this in.

I am by no means advocating using all of your sick leave each year, however it is an entitlement..

 

Mate you had a genuine reason!!! Hope all is well...

 

Also don't get financially free grinding yourself to the bone making someone else rich.

 

Most likely although I worked in public health before and. ..the amount of money wasted. ...people truely have no clue. It is staggering beyond what most people could imagine. And it goes way deeper than than. But I'll leave it there.

 

maybe there is also a compassionate leave to look after immediate family being sick, that is allowed for poster's company.

few years ago i took 5 consecutive days of compassionate leave to look after my partner, so this could easily add up to your yearly quota.

 

I'm pretty sure he would not have been paid for all those days and if he had them banked up then I guess he's entitled to take them.

I went for over 7 years in my public service shift work job without taking one sick day. I now have about 6 months worth of sick leave banked up in case I ever need it.

It did annoy me the amount of people that called in sick to get out of night shift and then down the track wonder why they have no leave when needed. You don't get paid out your sick leave so some people are of the mind set that if they don't take it the lose it.

 

Agreed, it's a definite problem. a friend recently went from working 10 odd years for some big resource companies to working for the government in the same sector and they've told me countless stories of just how bad and inefficient it is. pretty much no deadlines, barely any reporting and checks and balances, no work ethic etc. they even asked my friend to slow down a bit and not get through the work as quickly.

unfortunately when departments get cut etc it's often a case of seniority almost automatically winning out instead of competence and results so the countless "efficiency" measures the various governments go through regularly often leads to good people leaving instead of crap ones and then the department being unable to function. these idiots then hire outside consultants at far higher rates than the people they sacked to get the job done.

it's a complete joke, there are definitely some excellent people in the public sector but there are far too many useless ones who need to be thrown out if they can't lift their game.

 

Agree an entitlement to be used if sick. I understand people have mental health issues too.

I have overheard several conversations over the years and I know a nurse who says all her colleagues in the 3 hospitals she works at say this as well:
I've accumulated a sick day so I will take X day off.

That's Annual Leave or Leave without Pay in my book.

I (and maybe it's naive) like to think that if I ever did get really sick an employer would if they could afford to give me some grace past the minimum entitlement due to my work history.

I'd like to see a system where we can bank 50% of our unused sick leave entitlement every year and on leaving an organisation be paid out this banked entitlement. This would encourage IMO a more efficient use of the entitlement.

ALSO 100% AGREE WITH YOUR COMMENT THAT PEOPLE NEED TO RELAX A BIT. You should head your own advice. All that shouting in your post seems you were getting a little hot under the collar.

 

Yeah, all's well thanks mate, it just broke my record, I wanted to make it 10 years without a sick day lol.

All good now though, finished Chemo on Monday, should be completely fixed within a month

Then the investing (the real journey) begins

 

Unfortunately this doesn't happen. as much as the company would "want" to do it but they then set a precedence, you do it for one person you gotta do it for everyone.

My unpaid leave in Jan was basically for this reason.

 

Sorry to hear that.

Wishing you well on your road to recovery!

 

In many fields of endeavour, employees are a necessity eg. Healthcare, schools, personal services etc. If someone doesn't show up, then they will need a temp or casual to cover the work. This comes at a cost to the business - casual gets paid/employee gets sick pay. Why should you then believe that you should be entitled to being paid your sick leave when you cease employment? Maybe a reduction in wages might be more appropriate to cover the cost of lost production?

 

I know this one well, its a culture.

Nurses doing double shifts working in 2 different hospitals at the same time? how does that work, moonlighting doing private agency work, there may be an overlap of 1 hour and they all cover for each other, just part of the system that I witnessed.

When we talk about public servants it seems teachers, nurses and police don't fit into this category.

Many poor teacher who should be sacked because they are not interested in teaching whatsoever, over it etc. However the system allows this, bad teachers move on to bigger and better things. Its systems that need to change but that wont happen so public servants continue to milk it, gravy train. That's why they never retire.

MTR

 

Many older teachers are locked into the old defined benefits super scheme - when they joined the PS they nominated when they were going to retire and benefits are based on this date.

They can't retire early or change the date for fear of losing lifetime indexed benefits.

 

it does happen, just not all the time. a rigid approach like you mention approach would likely be the case in a large company but in a smaller one there's often more flexibility. unfortunately in a smaller one often they cant cover someone's long term absence too so it can be a tough balancing act even if there is a willingness for the employer to help out above and beyond statuory requirements.

 

Your right, and that is ONLY the tip of the iceberg. I have been 'privileged' to work in some very sensitive, high profile areas of our health system...most of that stuff his hidden from the public. But I'll just leave you with this thought. Imagine 'hypothetically' a system where tax payers are funding long term patient accomodartion, murderers btw, simply because they refuse to pay it. But here's the kicker. We, the tax payers are ALSO paying them a pension! hahah...and they refuse to pay from that pension accommodation fees. So we have to pay that too, plus they keep their pension.

And they want to cut tax incentives from investors??