Bradford factor

Calculate a staff member’s Bradford Factor score

The form below allows you to calculate a staff member’s Bradford Factor score.

How does it work?

1. Enter the staff member’s total number of unplanned absence days during the last 52 weeks.
2. Enter the number of separate incidents of unplanned absence in the same time period.
3. Click on calculate and the result will appear.

Fill out the form below to calculate out Bradford Factor scores:

Absence Details

• Total number of unplanned absence days during the last 52 weeks
• Number of separate instances of unplanned absences during the last 52 weeks
• Email Address
  * privacy details
• please select... Yes No Would you be interested in an online e-days demo?
• Telephone Number
  

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Want to work out the cost of absence for your business instead? Try our Absence Cost Calculator

e-days makes the Bradford Factor easy to use for your business

• Automatic calculation.
• Easy analysis with graphic display.
• Set automatic alert triggers.
• Create detailed reports.

Privacy:

• By completing the above form, you are agreeing to receive an automated email from Senior Internet Ltd (owners of e-days) containing a Bradford Factor score which has been calculated in response to the data you inputted at source.
• We are committed to keeping e-mail addresses confidential and secure; we will not sell, rent or lease email addresses to 3rd parties nor shall we provide your personal information to any 3rd party individuals or companies without your permission.
• When filling out any request form on the e-days website, you may be added to the Senior Internet Ltd database for future communication, or for statistical purposes.

The Bradford Factor is a Human Resources tool used by many organisations to measure and identify areas of absenteeism. The theory is that short, frequent and unplanned absences are more disruptive than longer absences.

It is based on the fact that it is normally easier to make arrangements to cover for staff who are going to be off for long periods, and which are more likely to be suffering from a genuine illness.

However, employees taking odd unplanned days off here and there actually cause more disruption to the business. If this pattern is repeated regularly, the employee will have a high Bradford Factor score; which may raise questions about how genuine the illness actually is.

The formula for the Bradford Factor is:

E x E x D = Bradford Factor Score

Where E is the number of episodes of absence and D is the total number of days absent in a rolling 52 week period.

So, for employees with a total of 10 days absence in one year, the Bradford Factor score can vary enormously, depending on the number of episodes of absence involved. For example:

One absence episode of 10 days is 10 points (i.e. 1 x 1 x 10)

Five absence episodes of two days each is 250 points (i.e. 5 x 5 x 10)

Ten absence episodes of one day each is 1,000 points (i.e. 10 x 10 x 10)

e-days and the Bradford Factor

e-days automatically calculates the Bradford Factor. By implementing e-days to streamline your absence management e-days will know exactly when employees are away from work, if it should count to their Bradford Factor and calculate their Bradford Factor on an ongoing basis.

e-days produces an irrefutable record that is calculated in the same way for every employee. It can be accessed in an instant and is updated in real time. e-days allows you to choose whether or not to show the Bradford Factor to your staff or managers.

Implementing an automatic system to calculate and verify the Bradford Factor is the easiest and most accurate way to utilise this formula. The time intensive calculation of the formula, in addition to the high potential for error and abuse, means that any successful application of the Bradford Factor requires an integrated and automatic absence management system.

How do organisations use the Bradford Factor?

There are no set rules for using the Bradford Factor; it is down to each organisation to determine the ways in which it uses the score.

However, used effectively, the Bradford Factor can reduce absenteeism dramatically, serving as a deterrent and a method for tackling persistent absenteeism.

Studies have shown that by educating staff about the Bradford Factor, and then showing them their score on a regular basis, absenteeism can be reduced by over 20%. This is largely down to staff understanding that taking the odd day off here and there will quickly multiply their Bradford Factor score. The Bradford Factor places a value on the absence which an employee can clearly see. Where the absence is not absolutely necessary, this can serve to deter absenteeism.

When this is used in conjunction with a points system the Bradford Factor can be effectively utilised to deter unnecessary absenteeism.

For example the Bradford Factor can be utilised by creating "triggers" whereby certain actions are taken when an employee’s Bradford score reaches a certain point. For example, the UK Prison Service has used the following triggers:

51 points – verbal warning.

201 points – written warning

401 points – final warning

601 points – dismissal

Setting these triggers is entirely dependent on the organisation using the Bradford Factor. It is usually advisable to use the Bradford Factor as one of a number of absence policies. However, setting these triggers and making staff aware of them, in addition to taking action, resulted in the Prison Service reducing absenteeism by 18%.

By implementing mandatory procedures for tackling absenteeism across an organisation led by the Bradford Factor, an organisation can remove the potential for differences across teams and management and remove the difficulties and reluctance that line managers often face when having to discipline a close staff member.

The Bradford Factor can provide organisations with a two pronged method for tackling absence: proactively deterring absence in the first place and utilising a set procedure to identify and tackle persistent absenteeism.

Implementing the Bradford Factor

Calculating the Bradford Factor for one member of staff over a given period is not a difficult proposition. However, calculating the Bradford Factor over a rolling 52 week period, across multiple teams and locations and considering different types of absence is a very difficult task.

As a result of the exponential nature of the formula {E x E x D}, even the slightest mistakes in calculation can result in a wide variance of an employee’s Bradford Factor score.

For example:

For an employee who has had 10 days off in a year in total, on two separate occasions:

2 X 2 X 10 = 40 {which does not trigger a warning – fewer than 50}

However, if their absence is either not recorded correctly, or is calculated wrong by just one day:

3 X 3 X 10= 90 {which does trigger a warning – over 50}

You can see that their score is more than double, despite the small mistake. Getting the formula the wrong way round can have even more significant results:

10 X 10 X 2 = 200 {which would trigger disciplinary proceedings – over 200}

If an organisation wants to tackle absenteeism effectively, using the Bradford Factor, including using an employee’s Bradford Factor score in potential disciplinary proceedings, then the process for calculating the Bradford Factor has to be full proof, consistent and equal. To achieve this, an organisation will need to ensure:

Absence reporting and monitoring is consistent, equal and accurate both over time and across the whole organisation.

The calculation of an employee’s Bradford Factor score is based on these accurate, equal and updated absence records.

Management and staff have access to updated Bradford Factor scores.

Without these processes in place the calculation of the Bradford Factor is extremely difficult and time consuming. In addition to this; unequal processes for reporting and calculating the Bradford Factor could be discriminatory; everyone’s Bradford Factor score should be subject to the same, indisputable criteria.

Sickness and unplanned absence costs businesses in the UK an average of £659 per employee, per year in direct salary costs alone (CIPD figures). The potential impact of absence on your organisation is in reality far more costly than sick pay alone.

On this occasion the client had an absence rate that far exceeded the national average, and as a result they researched ways to tackle absenteeism in their business. Ultimately they chose to implement the Bradford Factor as a way of measuring absence frequency and impact across the business.

The initial implementation of the Bradford Factor was however ineffectual, as it was complicated and time consuming to calculate manually and on spreadsheets. The lack of accuracy and speed undermined the new Bradford Factor policy.

Despite this the organisation was still confident that the Bradford Factor could be an effective policy when implemented correctly - they just needed to find the right way and e-days was the answer.

e-days was implemented quickly and had the following results:

Allowed for more accurate & quick recording of absence in the first place.

Any absence policy is only as good as the data feeding it and with e-days this organisation has implemented a straightforward, easy to use and accurate method for recording absence. By enabling managers to log absence in seconds, immediately after the absence is reported, this organisation have been able to take control of their absence reporting and provide a trustworthy base of information through which the Bradford Factor is calculated.

Accurately calculates the Bradford Factor

The Bradford Factor entails various rules which make it’s calculation a tricky process. As the formula is a multiplier, getting one figure wrong in the calculation can return drastically different scores. The client had to take the following factors into account when calculating the Bradford Factor:

• What type of absence was it?
• Were the sick days consecutive?
• How many instances of sickness has the staff member had in the last rolling 12 months?
• How many days has the person had off in the last rolling 12 months?
• Did the sick period fall over a non-working day, for example a bank holiday?

By entering absence directly into the e-days system, which automatically calculates the Bradford Factor, this organisation have turned a complicated and time consuming manual process into a quick and accurate automated process.

All of this is done without any manual calculation giving this organisation a confidence in their Bradford Factor policy that they did not have before.

Allowed for constant & real time monitoring of the Bradford Factor.

The client had previously been calculating the Bradford Factor as a month-end task. This was taking an administrator over 2 full days of manipulating pivot tables in excel, chasing up clarification from management and staff and checking calculations manually for consistency.

Now e-days has been deployed it is a simple case of logging into the system and generating a report with the necessary information. This report is then exported to a pre-built template which quickly determines whether any staff had exceeded their Bradford Factor limits. Potentially more important than this, however, has been their ability to generate warnings to managers whose staff may be about to exceed a policy limit. This allows for managers to consult with staff and identify problems proactively.

As this information is always up to date the client is now able to monitor the Bradford Factor far more frequently and they are now able to use the policy as a pro-active method to reduce absenteeism, rather than simply a method for punishing absence after the event.

Enabled clear communication of the Bradford Factor to management & staff.

Getting the most out of any Bradford Factor policy requires communicating the process and idea behind the system to employees and subsequently allowing them to see their score. e-days allows administrators of the system to choose whether or not to show the Bradford Factor score to employees, managers or HR only. This organisation chose to show employees their score whilst at the same time e-days was able to ensure this was private to them and their manager only.

Enabled the Bradford Factor to be utilised as a policy

The time consuming nature of manually calculating the Bradford Factor had begun to look less cost-effective with each month as more data was collected.

Furthermore, errors in the data and in the calculation of the system had seen a constant stream of challenges from employees who’s scores had not been correctly calculated. As errors were made confidence in the system was quickly eroded which provided a very shaky foundation upon which to build a sensitive absence policy.

Through implementing e-days this organisation has managed to save time and money and begin to cut down on their excessive rates of absence. Furthermore, through clear communication of the policy and scores and the accurate recording, employees have a better understanding of the policies and have a greater sense of control over their score.

As employees see their score rising, and can be sure it is correct, and that there may be consequences to this, they are less likely to take unnecessary absence. Reducing absenteeism after all is the goal of implementing a Bradford Factor policy.