Why is it useful?

• It is a benchmark
• It is impartial
• It allows comparison
• It discourages ‘sickies’ in the first place
• You can track it over time

If you are managing a small workforce you probably know which team-members are the ones who take ‘sickies’, and which are your solid-as-a-rock performers who turn up day-in, day-out. However, it is hard to know when you should start taking action against someone who you think is abusing the system, because you don’t have a good frame of reference against other companies, or a big enough data sample to be statistically confident of ‘normal’ limits.

In larger organisations, it is hard to monitor everyone, and line managers may see absence management as a low-priority unless it becomes critical. The Bradford Formula is a useful tool that HR can use as part of an absenteeism reduction strategy.

This formula allows you to identify those employees whose short term absences are reaching a level which is likely to be disrupting workflow, even though the numbers of days off may compare favourably with colleagues on long term sick

What level of Bradford Factor should be used to trigger an appraisal?

Each company will choose its own Bradford Factor depending on its own policies. Because the Bradford Formula is almost exponential it is easy to reach a high score quite quickly.

Customers using TeamSeer have a variety of different trigger levels, with higher values prompting further actions.

Most companies are monitoring the Bradford Factor on an annual basis - looking at either a calendar year or rolling 12 months; although with TeamSeer any period can be selected when producing reports. The alerts produced for line managers are typically raised weekly for hourly paid employees and monthly for salaried employees.

One organisation with mainly hourly paid workers that is trying to reduce its sickness days by 15% per annum has a trigger of 13 points per month. Someone that is off sick on 2 occasions for a total of 3 days a month would not trigger a review but any more time and occasions would. However one occasion of up to 12 days would not trigger a review.

Those organisations that are monitoring on a quarterly period on average are using a trigger of 27 points and those on an annual basis 80 points. At these levels an initial review with the staff member is conducted, and higher levels leading to more formal reviews and possibly disciplinary action.

Care with using the Bradford Formula

While the Bradford Formula is a useful tool, there are often good reasons for employee absenteeism, and so it should never be used in isolation. The scores act best as a trigger to prompt line managers to investigate a case further.

Secondly, if staff are made aware of their ‘score’ on a regular basis, the formula can be counter-productive as staff ‘work up to the limits’.