What is the Bradford Factor?

One of the worst scenarios a small business owner experiences is when an employee consistently calls in from work for illness-related reasons, like medical appointments, family emergencies, or childcare.

When one of your staff members is frequently absent from work, you’re not powerless. Using a formula called the Bradford Factor, you can develop a plan of action to handle your employee’s unexpected absences professionally and gracefully.

Read on to learn about what the Bradford Factor is, what the trigger points for it are, and the pros and cons of using it to help you evaluate your employees’ performances.

What Is The Bradford Factor?

The Bradford Factor, also known as the sickness calculator, is HR jargon for a formula to quickly determine how disruptive a staff member’s unexpected, illness-based absences are.

It is calculated by the number of absence occurrences, squared, multiplied by the total number of absences. The result is the Bradford sickness score, which tells business owners how badly an employee’s absences are affecting their performance and, by extension, the company.

What Are The Bradford Factor Trigger Points?

The higher the score that an employee receives through the Bradford Factor score calculator, the more at risk they are for hitting trigger points. Trigger points are the scores at which a company will take action against the staff member.

For example, if a staff member’s Bradford sickness score is 0-21 for the whole year, then the employer usually won’t take any action. This low number indicates they haven’t been absent from work unexpectedly very often.

As their score climbs higher to other trigger points, however, an employee may receive a verbal warning, a written warning, or even be dismissed. It’s up to the business owner to decide which trigger points to act on and how severely.

Pros And Cons Of Using The Bradford Factor

There are both pros and cons to using the Bradford Factor as part of your small business’s staff management strategy. We’ve listed them below.

Pros

Helps Employers Assess Employees’ Performances

Since their workforce is small to begin with, small businesses need employees who are performing at their best. The Bradford Factor helps small business owners assess their employees’ overall work performances, to decide where they need to improve or if they should be let go.

Incentivises Employees To Not Be Absent

Scoring each employee based on the number of times they’ve been absent from work incentivizes them to not be absent any more than they have to. They know that if their score is too high, they could be severely punished.

Cons

Doesn’t Account For Employee Disability, Recurring Illness, Or Family Issues

Bear in mind that the Bradford Factor trigger points aren’t the only scores you should assess to decide how to take action against an employee. For example, the score doesn’t account for things like disability, recurring illness, or family emergencies. Small business owners should remember that their employees are human beings and can’t control downward swings in their health, or the sickness or deaths of other people in their lives.

Conclusion

The Bradford Factor is a tried-and-tested tool that will inform your decision on how to manage employees who are frequently absent from work. That’s why Team Planner - our holiday and absence tracking solution for small businesses - is equipped with a Bradford Factor score calculator. We make it easy for you to track the sickness score of each of your staff members so you can develop an effective plan of action.

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