Bradford Factor Calculator
The Bradford Factor is a formula that represents how many unplanned absences an employee has in a year. The bigger an employee’s Bradford Factor score, the bigger the impact their absences have.
Calculate your Employee’s Bradford Factor Score Today
Our calculator makes it simple to work out each employee’s Bradford Factor, saving your HR teams invaluable time. Just input the figures in the correct fields below, and we’ll give you an accurate response:
Bradford Factor: 0
Understanding Employee Absence with the Bradford Factor
Absence happens, it’s inevitable. It’s unrealistic to expect your staff to have a perfect record of attendance, but understanding how absence affects your company is a smart move.
Without coming across as too encroaching, absence does need monitoring and reporting. Reporting helps you to understand the impact that absence has on your company, such as changes in morale or productivity. It could even highlight inefficient processes when key members take sick leave. You want to minimise any negative effects as soon as possible, ensuring your workforce remains happy, on-task and on schedule.
What is the Bradford Factor?
The Bradford Factor is a formula used by HR managers & professionals for absentee reporting. In essence, it finds a number that best represents the impact any unplanned absence has on a company. HR teams often use it as a visualisation tool to help manage and compare absenteeism across a workforce.
To complete its calculations, it uses two numbers: the number of instances of absence and the number of total days of absence in a 52-week period.
The origins of the Bradford Factor are unclear, though is known to be named after the city of Bradford in West Yorkshire, England, where it was reportedly first used.
How is the Bradford Factor calculated?
Of all the formulas you may have learnt in school, the Bradford Factor is one of the simplest.
As we said, the two numbers you need are the number of instances of absence and the number of total days of absence in a 52-week period.
Those two numbers, where E is the number of instances and D is the number of total days absent, create the below formula:
E2 x D = Bradford Factor score
It’s as simple as that!
Examples of the Bradford Factor
Seeing that formula can be one thing but putting it into practice is another. If you’re math savvy, you may have figured out that if you have regular short bouts of sickness, you’ll have a higher Bradford Factor. However, if you have fewer bouts of sickness but take more days of time off when you are sick, the Bradford Factor will be less.
Here’s what it could look like if an employee had five unplanned days off, split into a variety of instances.
Employee number 1:
Employee takes five days off in a row:
1 x 1 x 5 = 5
Employee number 2:
Employee takes three days off and then a few weeks later takes two days off:
2 x 2 x 5 = 20
Employee number 3:
Employee takes two days, then another two days then a final day:
3 x 3 x 5 = 45
The number in bold is the Bradford Factor.
How to make the most of the Bradford Factor
The Bradford Factor has some uses as an equal playing field when it comes to absence. However, what it fails to consider is personal circumstance, which can mean that certain employees must be off more for reasons, such as sick children, physical illness or fatigue.
With Staffology HR, you can easily see every employee’s Bradford Factor, as well as their submitted reason for absence, to understand which employees need support. You’ll also be able to see employees who are at risk of taking more absence, as well as employees who may need intervention when it comes to illness. It is also possible to set up automatic alerts that can be triggered when certain thresholds are met.