Bradford Factor Calculator

The Bradford Factor uses a simple formula: B = S2 x D. S is the number of separate absence spells (also called occasions or instances) an employee has had, D is the total number of days absent across all of those spells, and B is the resulting score. Both S and D are usually measured over a rolling 52-week period, so an absence from more than a year ago typically drops out of the calculation.

Squaring S is what makes this formula distinctive. Doubling the number of separate absences quadruples that part of the score, while doubling the total days absent only doubles it. In practice, two employees who miss the exact same number of days can end up with very different scores, depending entirely on how those days were split up.

All four rows total the same 12 days off, but the score climbs from 12 to 1,728 purely because of how many separate times the employee was away. That is the entire point of the formula: it is designed to flag disruptive, unpredictable patterns of short absence, not simply to add up sick days.

There is no single official cutoff for what counts as a good or bad Bradford Factor score. It depends entirely on the trigger points your own employer or organization has set. That said, several commonly cited scales converge on a similar rough shape:

These bands are general conventions drawn from common HR practice, not a legal standard. Some organizations use tighter thresholds, with formal review starting as low as 100, and others use looser ones. Always check your own employer's absence policy for the specific numbers that actually apply to you.

Trigger Points and What Happens at Each Level

A trigger point is simply the specific score at which a defined management step is supposed to happen, such as an informal chat, a formal review meeting, or a written warning. Acas, the UK's official workplace advisory service, recommends that reaching a trigger point should prompt a conversation, not an automatic disciplinary outcome, and that no single absence-management score should ever be the sole basis for a decision about someone's job.

• An informal, private conversation with the employee's manager
• A documented, formal absence review meeting
• A written warning under a capability or disciplinary procedure
• Consideration of dismissal, only after a full and fair process

The Bradford Factor has real, well-documented critics. Its biggest limitation is that it cannot tell a genuine, unavoidable illness apart from anything else; it only measures the pattern, not the reason behind it. An employee managing a chronic health condition, a disability, or ongoing caregiving responsibilities can end up with a high score through no fault of their own, simply because their circumstances produce frequent short absences.

This is not just an ethical concern; it is a legal one too. In the UK, the Equality Act 2010 requires employers to consider reasonable adjustments for employees with a disability, and most HR and legal guidance recommends discounting disability-related absence from a Bradford Factor calculation before acting on the score. Using the formula mechanically, without that context, is one of the more common ways employers run into discrimination claims.

None of this makes the Bradford Factor useless. Used well, it is one input among several for spotting patterns worth a conversation. It just should not be treated as an automatic verdict.

The Bradford Factor formula itself does not change for part-time staff; S and D are counted the same way. The nuance is in what counts as a day. Most UK HR guidance recommends counting only the days an employee was actually contracted to work, not calendar days. An employee who works Monday to Wednesday and is off sick for a full calendar week has missed 3 working days, not 5, and D should reflect that.

Applying this consistently matters legally as well as practically. Part-time workers are protected from being treated less favorably than comparable full-time employees, so trigger points and scoring conventions should be applied the same way regardless of someone's working pattern.

A related question is whether weekends count at all. Conventions vary: some employers count only the scheduled working days actually missed, while others count the full calendar span of a single absence spell, including any weekend that falls inside it. Neither approach is universally correct; check which convention your own organization's absence policy uses, since it changes the D value for any absence that spans a weekend.

For tracking paid time off separately from sickness absence, see the Annual Leave Accrual Calculator. In the US, a similar pattern of frequent short absences may also qualify for protected leave, worth checking against the FMLA Leave Entitlement Calculator.

A high score is a starting point for a conversation, not a script for what happens next. Most organizations follow a staged process: an informal chat to understand what is going on, a documented formal review if the pattern continues, a written warning under a capability or disciplinary procedure, and only as a last resort, consideration of dismissal, always following a full, fair, and properly investigated process.

If an absence pattern does eventually factor into a redundancy situation or the end of employment, a high Bradford Factor score on its own is not a substitute for that proper process. See the Redundancy Pay Calculator (UK) and Severance Pay Estimator for what an employee may be entitled to if it gets to that stage.