THERE’S an old tongue twister that goes, how many sickies would a public servant chuck if a public servant could chuck sickies?

If you work at Aboriginal Hostels Limited, a government body which provides accommodation and support services for indigenous Australians, you chucked nearly 22 sickies last year.

That’s according to new data compiled by the Australian Public Service Commission for its annual State of the Service report, which names and shames the worst offenders by department.

In 2014-15, Aboriginal Hostels Limited’s 483 staff chucked an average of 21.9 sickies each. The National Film and Sound Archive was the second-worst offender at 20.9 sickies across its 206 staff.

The Australian Research Council, which once handed out a $180,000 grant to a researcher to research the process of applying for grants, came in third place with its 115 staff taking an average 16 sickies.

In fourth place was the Royal Australian Mint with 15.9 sickies across 198 staff, followed by the Clean Energy Regulator rounding out the top five with 15.2 sickies across 309 staff.

To put that in perspective, research by workplace management firm Direct Health Solutions shows the average Australian worker took 8.6 sick days in 2015. Private sector workers took 7.9 days, compared with 10.3 for public sector workers.

Public sector absenteeism increased from 4.2 per cent in 2014 to 4.5 per cent in 2015.

According to DHS, the cost of absenteeism to the Australian economy now exceeds $32.5 billion per annum in payroll and lost productivity costs, with the average cost of absence now $347 per work day.

DHS managing director Paul Dundon said the public sector was plagued with “chronically high” absenteeism. “There is a chronic inability to manage the entitlement culture in the public sector,” he said.

“It’s developed because of poor management and a high tolerance for people to take high levels of sick leave. It’s easy to take sick leave in the public sector because there are no consequences. They refuse to do anything about it.”

Mr Dundon said innovations in the private sector such as the service DHS provides, where employees must ring through to a nurse contact centre which captures and tracks absenteeism data, had delivered 20 to 40 per cent reductions in absences.

“The public sector doesn’t have the right systems to manage this and they won’t deal with the private sector [to help them],” he said.

Out of the large government bodies across the public service, which employs 150,000 people, the Department of Human Services had the highest rate of absenteeism, with its 34,890 staff taking an average of 14.7 sick days each.

“Attendance management remains a challenge for the [Australian public service],” the APSC says in its report. “Work is underway to investigate the causes of poor attendance and possible solutions for improving attendance. The average rates of personal and miscellaneous leave continue to increase.”

On the plus side, Peter Costello must be cracking the whip, because the Future Fund Management Agency was the best-performer. The 98 staff tasked with managing our sovereign wealth took just 3.7 sick days on average.

And the Climate Change Authority, operating on a skeleton staff of just 17 — 11 of whom are in the $95,456 —$121,611 salary band of executive level one or higher — came in second place with just 5.2 sick days on average.

For its part, the APSC’s 221 staff took 11.7 sick days on average. The APSC says it is undertaking a number of “ongoing research projects”, including a “more comprehensive examination of causal factors that influence leave-taking behaviour” and an “evaluation of the effectiveness of the APS Absence Management toolkit”.

Daily Dilemma: Can taking sickies affect your career? On Studio 10, Alison Stephenson and the panel discuss whether taking sickies can impact your career. Courtesy: Studio 10/Channel Ten

frank.chung@news.com.au