save yerself some typing:

if object_id('dbo.table_name') is not null

drop dbo.table_name

toss that at the top of the script too before dropping the sp ahead of the create statement

The term IT guy, I've found, is usually only used in small companies where the department is 5 people.

If IT is a big part of your company, then the desktop...

why not just datediff() the number of days between the parameter and getdate() - then divide that number by 365.25?

just do this to retrieve the element count for the loop - we've had to do this a lot..

select @max-2 = @x.value('fn:count(/Employees/Employee)','int')

or you could even include the xpath...