Netflix Flu Strikes Again

NSW Public Service Catches a Case of “Elevated Absenteeism”

A report tabled in the NSW Parliament last week revealed that public servants are taking almost 50 percent more sickies than workers in the private sector.

My first thought …

Aren’t most public servants already working from home?

Maybe that’s too harsh. But the figures invite cynicism.

NSW taxpayers paid for 9 days of sick leave for each public servant last year, costing $1.5bn.

We could build 10 new schools every year if our money wasn’t being quietly vaporised by coughs, colds and what appears to be a highly virulent strain of the Netflix flu.

Nine days of sick leave taken for every public servant … compared to six days for every private sector worker.

Germs are far more aggressive in government buildings. Or perhaps more imaginative.

Naturally, the bureaucratic response is that public servants are suffering burnout because there simply aren’t enough of them.

This would be more persuasive if we didn’t currently have more public servants than at any point in history.

It begs the question, how many public servants do we need?

And the answer, no matter how many we have, is always the same – just a couple more.

One can’t help but suspect that sick leave has quietly morphed into recreation leave, but with a different name.

Managers, of course, are powerless to question it. Because asking whether someone is genuinely ill would constitute “bullying”, and in the public sector, that’s worse than absenteeism itself.

But here’s what really stood out to me.

The report itself documented what it refered to as “elevated absenteeism” within the NSW public sector workforce.

Elevated absenteeism.

I have to say, that’s public-sector language at its finest.

Words designed - not to clarify reality - but to smother it with a damp, taxpayer-funded pillow.

No one pulls a sickie.

No one mysteriously develops a migraine every second Friday.

No, no. What we have is elevated absenteeism, as though the problem has been lifted gently heavenward by angels in sensible shoes.

Elevated absenteeism. In other words, public servants are sick a lot.

Why not just say that?

Well, plain speak assigns responsibility.

And responsibility is the one thing the bureaucracy is certainly allergic to.

“Staff aren’t turning up to work” implies someone might have to do something about it.

“Elevated absenteeism” sounds like a weather event. What can you do???

This is the same linguistic magic that turns budget blowouts into “fiscal challenges”, and failure into “lessons learned.”

It’s a language where nothing ever goes wrong - it merely underperforms expectations.

The public service speaks this way because it exists in a world where words are insulation.

If you wrap reality in enough syllables, it can’t hurt you. Or your career.