Bradford Factor
Calculating the Bradford Factor with TeamSeer
The Bradford Factor is used to help identify staff whose sickness absenteeism needs reviewing in greater detail.
TeamSeer calculates the Bradford Factor automatically, for any time span, and for all employees. Because TeamSeer is specifically designed for absence management, it takes account of factors such as half-days, bank holidays, and part-time working, and will always give you the correct figures.
Because it is so easy for line managers to register staff absence using TeamSeer, they are more likely to create a full record of absenteeism.
Because employees use TeamSeer to log their holiday, and every time they log in they see their absence, they are made aware that their absences are being tracked – and it is obvious to them and to their line manager when they start abusing the system. Using TeamSeer will therefore reduce sickies in the first place.
Employees are ranked by descending order of Bradford Factor. HR and line managers can then view the calendars of staff with a high score and use this calendar in performance appraisals.
How is it calculated?
It is calculated by looking at the sickness over a period (often a year, but could be any time period) and counting the number of sickness days [D], and the number of sickness episodes [E] (a consecutive period of sickness).
The Bradford Formula: Bradford Points = D x E x E (Number of Sickness Days times Episodes squared) You can see how Bradford Formula emphasises sickies from the following two examples:
Why is it hard to calculate?
- Manual checking is usually needed
- Time consuming
- Highly repetitive
- Easy to miscount episodes
If you are using Excel or a database to track absence, calculating the Bradford Formula can be very time-consuming. This is because calculating sickness episodes has to be checked manually for each employee. Factors such as half-days, bank holidays, part-time working, shifts, and tie-in with other absence must all be taken into consideration.
In the example above, the Bradford Formula should count the sick days shown in green as one episode, rather than two, because the time between Friday and Wednesday were all non-work days for this employee. The Saturday and Sunday were the weekend, Monday was a bank holiday and Tuesday the employee took off as a paid holiday.
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’.
What our clients say...
Siemens uses TeamSeer to calculate the Bradford Factor.
“Tracking the Bradford formula in TeamSeer has made a big time saving impact, I am now confident sicknesses will be reduced.”
Elaine Hendrie, HR Officer at Siemens Flow Instruments.
