[christopheraden]

Thank you for posting the data--it makes it easier for us to follow along at home.

I've written something up where I used tenure instead of the ranks. http://christopheraden.github.io/SickTime.html.

Here’s my concern with the original model, having slept on it: What does it actually buy you? In order to use the model, you must know the rank of sick time of the employee, relative to all other employees. In order to calculate this, you have to have the raw sick time numbers. At which point, what’s the point in making a regression with it—just work with the raw sick times to begin with!

Wouldn't sick time taken per year be a more interesting measure? Over time, wouldn't you expect that an employee of 30 years would've taken more sick time than an employee of six months? Aren't you really concerned about whether in a particular year older employees are not taking as much vacation as newer employees?

[carlerickson]

It's fun to read your much more sophisticated analysis. As to the excellent question of what utility my study has, the truth is that I didn't expect any. I didn't look at the data thinking I had a problem to solve, or that there were people abusing our sick time policy. I was just curious.

We averaged about 2.5 sick days / employee / year over the last 12 months. That's quite a bit lower than some reports I've read. It also happens to be exactly the number I picked 10 years ago when I was first making an economic model of my company.