The Bradford Factor is a formula used to calculate the disruptive impact of short-term and unplanned employee absences on productivity levels. It can be used to reduce absenteeism rates, but may be discriminatory towards employees with disabilities and can encourage sick employees to work, leading to more long-term absences.
The Bradford factor, or Bradford formula, is a theory regarding the disruptive influence on productivity levels of short-term and unplanned employee absences. It is attributed to research carried out at the University of Bradford in West Yorkshire, England, in the 1980s. The official formula is written as B = S2 x D, where B is the Bradford score, S is the number of consecutive absence periods. employees per individual over a fixed period of time and D is the total number of days absent during the period. same period.
The higher the score, the more disruptive an employee is seen to be with the company. An employee can be away more days and have a lower score than anyone else, however, if most of those days are consecutive. This is because absences that occur in groups of consecutive days are seen as less detrimental to the company’s overall productivity than individual absence days that are randomly spaced.
Absenteeism calculations that utilize the Bradford factor can be used by human resource management departments to determine causes and reduce overall absenteeism. Despite this general benefit of the approach, employees with disabilities often have absences beyond their control and calculations can be discriminatory. For this reason, a law such as the British Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) 1995 was revised in 2005 and protects employees from undue disciplinary action for failing grades for which they were not directly responsible.
A score of 250 or higher is seen as one of Bradford’s main triggers for severe absence. When these high scores occur, they are best evaluated in light of return-to-work interviews and production manager meetings, so that the score alone is not a basis for decision making. The area where Bradford Factor calculations seem to have a clear impact on working time is in call center environments, where planning for peak periods is precisely planned. Unplanned, short-term absences also have the effect of feeling like a mini-vacation for employees still on the job and can create an environment that increases overall absenteeism. On the other hand, long absences that result in significant loss of pay and opportunities for advancement generally seem to be more excused by other employees and are therefore less disruptive overall.
Using the Bradford Factor formula to monitor absenteeism rates and sharing the results with employees appears to reduce system-wide absenteeism by an average of 20%. Whether this is entirely beneficial can be questioned, however, as the reason given for most short-term absences is that they are being used as sick leave. Encouraging employees to work sick may, in fact, contribute to more long-term absences, which the Bradford Factor formula does not penalize as strictly and therefore has a blind spot. Human resource management formulas, therefore, can be counterproductive if sick and disabled employees are coerced into entering work when they are not fully capable of performing their duties, and should be used with common sense and caution.
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