Thursday’s public holiday caused a spike in unscheduled leave and worker no-shows, says Deputy data

Nearly one in four retail shifts rostered for last Thursday’s official day of mourning went unworked, scheduling platform Deputy says, suggesting thousands of workers across Australia either “chucked a sickie” or simply decided not to turn up.

In recognition of Queen Elizabeth II’s death this month, the federal government declared Thursday, September 22 as a public holiday, a decision which caught Australia’s business community off guard.

While some business leaders welcomed an opportunity to reflect on the monarch’s legacy, others feared the public holiday would significantly impact trade, and could convince some workers to swing for a rare four- or five-day weekend by taking unscheduled leave.

Figures provided to SmartCompany suggest those concerns were warranted.

On Thursday, 23.8% of all retail shifts logged on Deputy went unworked, the platform said. By comparison, only 6% of rostered shifts went unworked the previous Thursday, September 15.

All told, nearly 3200 retail shifts logged on Deputy’s system last Thursday did not go ahead.

Staff absences appeared even greater in the healthcare sector.

Among the doctors, dentists, and allied health businesses which opened on Thursday, some 31.7% of rostered shifts went unworked, Deputy said.

Staff absenteeism also hit above-average levels in the services sector (16.2% of rostered shifts unworked) and hospitality (7.6%).

Those levels remained elevated across Friday and Saturday across all sectors, the data shows, suggesting many workers took unscheduled leave throughout the weekend to capitalise on the rare circumstances.

The unexpected absence of thousands of workers nationwide would have added extra pressure to businesses already struggling with staff shortages.

However, the data also indicates many businesses faced the opposite problem: a lack of trade which forced early closure.

In addition to the percentage of rostered shifts worked, the Deputy data also captures the percentage of rostered hours worked.

In retail, 25.1% of rostered hours went unworked; as only 23.8% of rostered shifts went unworked, it appears at least some workers present on the day had their shifts short.

The same pattern was evident across the services sector (16.4% rostered hours unworked vs 16.2% rostered shifts unworked) and healthcare (33.5% vs 31.7%).

The exception was hospitality, where it appears staff members stayed back to cope with the extra workload.

Just 6.7% of rostered hours went unworked, compared to the 7.6% of rostered shifts which went unworked, suggesting many restaurant and cafe employees worked overtime to pick up the slack.

While the data shows how tumultuous the public holiday was for small businesses and the payroll staff tasked with ensuring compliance, the precise cost of the public holiday is harder to pin down.

Estimates generally range from hundreds of millions to billions of dollars in lost economic activity, though some onlookers believe giving workers extra days off can pay dividends in increased productivity down the line.