The year 2022 is almost upon us and this is the month when human resource departments in medium-sized firms and managers in small enterprises are finalising their plans for the months to come.

Industrial relations and human resource departments in the larger firms have already done it and are now just waiting on board approval. This is a standard end-of-year (EOY) exercise that takes place in NGOs, FBOs, trade unions, religious bodies and most family-based enterprises as well. Except this year there is nothing "standard" about it.

This year, we cannot base our future plans on past experiences, because we know that whatever is going to be 'the new normal' will not benefit from experience gained from 'the old normal.' There isn't one. The last two years have shifted things in confusing waves of different sizes and times.

One of the EOY exercises that human resources departments, hand in hand with finance and accounts do, for example, is to review staff costs from previous years and calculate how to allocate funds for the upcoming year. You know, balancing how much you expect to have to spend in relation to how much you expect to earn, without going into debt.

Since income has been and will continue to be uncertain for the next 12-20 months, we all start with the first commandment of budgeting: do not borrow for recurrent expenditure unless you can repay the debt out of recurrent income. We learned that in secondary school. And this relates to family budgets as well as organisational ones.

Government budgeting apparently works on different rules, as this year's budget has shown, just piling up debt for future generations to pay, and symbolically 'printing' more money (what is called quantitative easing) to make each year's accounts look good.

Do not try this at home. Your bank will not allow it.

For the cost of employing staff, the same rule applies. Employment costs include not just salaries and wages, employers' contributions to national insurance, PAYE (pay as you earn), pension and health contributions for those who have plans for them (and yes, this does include family and domestic budgets as well). Staff costs include the cost of employee absenteeism.

In organisational life, every day an employee is absent with pay and without performance, for example, is a cost. And year after year, HR departments fudge a little. If organisational policy is to allow ten days' absence with pay per employee per year, for some reason, instead of calculating 'per year' on a roll-over basis (ie how many days each employee has been absent for the last 12 months or 365 calendar days), inexperienced HR departments wipe the individual employee's record clean on December 31 and start counting again on January 1.

So someone who has been absent for the entire allowable 20 days by the end of December, two 'sick days' at a time, up to 14 working days, with one or two 'personal or casual days' up to a limit of five, plus a few days off for 'bereavement leave' and another ten-20 paid vacation leave days can start being abse

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