In putting together (as opposed to writing) my last post, I searched through the archives to find my previous complaints about BusinessWeek. Surprisingly, there really weren’t any. Apparently I generaly don’t care so much about BW’s errors and omissions to actually formulate a written complaint. However, I did find a post from June 2007 when I was complaining about John Test who was spouting stupid information and citing BusinessWeek. When I re-read the information, I realized the amazing data that is either way wrong or rather shocking.
Consider the quote:
According to a recent Harris poll, one in five North American workers have pretended to be sick to get out of going to work. In fact, 64% of sick days are really just mental health days. But those un-sick days are costing companies $654 per employee every year.
If you have a hunch that someone at work uses this ploy, look for the #1 sign the day before. Your suspect will cough and complain of a sore throat, just to make it more believable when they call the next morning. Men and women are guilty in about equal numbers. It’s estimated that employees took an average of 5.6 sick days last year.
Let’s put all those numbers together. It is claimed that 64% of sick days are fraudulent, that only 20% of the workforce is responsible for them, and that in aggregate, all workers miss 5.6 days per year. If you back things out, the claim is that the 80% of honest workers are taking, on average, 2.52 actual sick days leaving the 20% of pretenders to take, on average, 17.92 “mental health days” per year. The quoted numbers are probably wrong, but HOLY COW!
