The Bradford factor is a calculation used to measure the impact of employee absences on an organization.
📌Note: To view an employee's Bradford factor in, you need the Admin BradfordFactor permission.
Importance of Bradford factor
The Bradford factor helps your organization measure and monitor the impact of employee absences.
It's particularly useful for identifying patterns in sick leave because it gives more weight to frequent, short absences rather than longer single absences. For example, 10 separate single-day absences would score much higher such as 1000 points than one 10-day absence as 10 points.
Your company can use it to set up sickness triggers in HR systems that can automatically flag when employees reach certain absence thresholds based on days, instances, or Bradford factor scores. This helps, you as a manager, monitor attendance patterns and manage workforce planning more effectively.
How it's calculated
It's calculated using the formula: B = S² x D
Where:
B is the Bradford Factor score.
S is the total number of separate absence instances over a set period, usually a year.
D is the total number of days absent during that same period.
The formula gives more weight to frequent, short absences rather than fewer, longer absences. For example, 10 days of absence could result in:
1 instance of 10 days = 10 points.
3 instances totalling 10 days = 90 points.
5 instances of 2 days each = 250 points.
10 instances of 1 day each = 1000 points.
Set up Bradford factor
To set up Bradford factor triggers for your company, you'll need to create absence triggers in the system by following the below steps:
Go to Settings under Configuration or Admin Menu.
Click Module Settings then HR.
Click Absence Trigger and Add Absence Trigger.
Set up triggers based on:
Days - total sick days taken.
Instances - number of separate sickness records.
Bradford Factor - the calculated Bradford score.
📌Note: Choose your Trigger Period to define the timeframe for monitoring like rolling 12 months. This lets you automatically flag employees when they hit certain absence thresholds, helping you manage attendance patterns effectively.