What is the Bradford Factor and How Does It Work?
Everyone gets ill, and we all know the dread of unexpected car trouble or a household emergency that means we can’t make it into the office. However, absence among staff can pose real difficulties for smaller workplaces, making lots of unplanned time off a genuine problem for HR to deal with.
When someone steps away frequently, even for just a day at a time, the knock-on effect often upsets routines more than a longer, one-time absence. That’s the premise behind the Bradford Factor, a useful HR tool that works in tandem with your sickness policy, and that offers a way to assign a number to patterns of absence and see where disruption might happen.
What is the Bradford Factor?
The Bradford Factor is a human resources system used by employers and HR advisors to measure staff absence in a way that highlights frequent short-term absences.
The factor gives each employee a score that increases the more often they’re off work, regardless of how many total days they’ve missed.
Short, repeated absences are more disruptive to small teams’ workflows than longer, occasional periods of leave (for example usual periods of sickness or family emergencies). It’s this repeated leave that the Bradford Factor helps highlight. By giving more weight to frequency than duration, it helps you spot patterns that may otherwise go unnoticed.
How to calculate the Bradford Factor
The standard Bradford Factor formula is: S² × D.
S is the number of separate spells of absence in a given time period (usually a rolling 52 weeks). D is the total number of days absent in that same period.
To calculate an employee’s Bradford score, you square the number of absences, and then multiply that number by the total amount of days of work missed. It’s a relatively simple structure that’s easy to calculate consistently, but also means that a score will rise quickly for employees who call in sick regularly (even if they’re only missing a couple of days at a time).
Bradford Factor score example
Let’s dive into a real-world example to demonstrate how the Bradford Factor works in practice. Let’s say your company has two employees who have both missed 10 working days over the year.
Employee A takes one 10-day absence: 1² × 10 = 10
Employee B takes 10 separate one-day absences: 10² × 10 = 1000
The second score, Employee B’s, looks much higher, even though both employees were off for the same amount of time overall. However, lots of stop-start absences and disjointed working weeks is generally more harmful to productivity than one single instance of absence. This is what the score aims to reflect: disruption from unplanned, repeated absence.
What is a good Bradford Factor score?
For most businesses, if an employee has a low Bradford score, it means they’ve had few, or no, periods of absence. So, of course, there’s no absence-related HR action to be taken.
For an easy-to-check guide, here are the typical bands for Bradford Scores:
0-49: no concern, a normal amount of time off work
50-100: might require monitoring if there are no extenuating circumstances
101-200: we recommend an informal conversation with the employee to discuss and understand the reasons for absences
201+: this is usually the threshold for formal absence reviews and potential disciplinary conversations
That being said, please note that these are the typical guidelines for assessing a Bradford Factor score. We often recommend that smaller teams and independent businesses set internal thresholds a little lower, since absences can have a bigger impact on teams with fewer members.
What is a bad Bradford Factor score?
High Bradford scores don’t automatically mean someone is unreliable, but they do show a pattern of frequent absences that may affect the rest of the team and, ultimately, business productivity. Anything over 200 may indicate a problem that needs exploring—whether it’s health-related, workplace-related, or linked to personal issues.
What counts as “bad” depends on how absence affects your business, and is generally best decided on a case-by-case basis. For example, a cafe with four employees might feel the strain after just a few missed shifts from one person. A desk-based team of twenty may absorb that same amount of absences more easily.
Are there any downsides to using the Bradford Factor for a small business?
While the Bradford Factor is often a very useful HR guideline and is used as a fairly universal measure, there are some potential downsides to the system that you’ll need to consider.
For a start, the score doesn’t tell you why someone’s been off. It treats all absences the same—even if someone is managing a long-term condition or a sudden serious life event. Used without care or individual context, it may push people to come in unwell or before they’re actually fit for work, especially if they fear penalties for high scores.
There is also the potential to penalise those with protected conditions under the Equality Act if the Bradford score is used without proper judgement and modification. If you rely on the score alone, you might miss your duty to make reasonable adjustments.
Then there’s the more subjective impacts of using this kind of system to effectively rate employee attendance. First and foremost, it can have an impact on team morale. To avoid this and to keep the system as professional and neutral as possible, explain the purpose clearly and use it as a prompt for a friendly chat, rather than a disciplinary action.
Final thoughts
The Bradford Factor can be a helpful tool for HR professionals, but it’s not the full picture. Used sensibly (and with full context), it prompts conversations, not confrontations. Small businesses often benefit most when they balance structure with empathy—and that’s where outsourced, fractional HR can really help.
Need help setting absence policies that work for your business?
Get in touch, and we’ll help you introduce fair, effective absence management systems that support your team and protect your time.