Absenteeism creates problems for organizations. The policies of the Civil Service Retirement System, available to federal workers hired before 1987, allow unused sick leave to be added to length of service when workers retire. The policies of the Federal Employees Retirement System, on the other hand, create a use or lose situation. Yearly data on sick leave, a measure of absenteeism, for employees at the Federal Bureau of Prisons were examined for 1994 through 2003. The results of multilevel analysis confirmed that different incentive structures of the two federal retirement systems produced differences in the use of sick leave. The analysis also demonstrated that the use of leave was affected by differences in the environment at the respective prisons. Finally, some preliminary and rough cost figures are presented to give some idea of the financial costs associated with the greater leave associated with the newer federal retirement system.
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