Sickness Absence

Hi all,

I'm hoping for a bit of insight into how other organisations calculate sickness absence and any issues they've found with the particular method?

We're currently using the Bradford Factor for both short term and long term sickness absence, however are in the process of trying to identify a new way of calculating absence which can be consistently applied in our contact centres, retail stores and head office. This is for a variety of reasons, the main one being that we don't appear to be using the Bradford Factor as it was intended.

We're not yet sure of a system / calculation which would be suitable, but would welcome input from others as to what's worked for them.

Thank you in advance

Sarah

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Replies

  • Hi Sarah,

    In previous companies, it was if employees had 3 separate absence periods in a 12 month period (but these had to be unrelated to each other).

    In my current organisation, we use Cascade HR whereby managers add in sickness for their team, and employees can self-certify and upload doctors notes. It does calculate a Bradford Factor score but also records the actual days of the week - for example if someone only ever had Mondays off, it might be a signal that they are unhappy / not wanting to come into work as opposed to being sick.

    We have a trigger (I'm not sure off the top of my head what it is) but when the Bradford Factor score goes above a certain number, it triggers an alert to HR and the employee's manager - more to make sure we check in to see if everything is okay.

    It's too early for us to say how effective it is yet as we have only been using it for a few months - and it depends if managers update it properly - so I'll be interested to read how other companies record this too.  

  • Hello Sarah

    We have a reward scheme whereby employees are allow 3 occurences over a rolling 12 month period.  If you don't have any sickness absence then you receive £210 in your pay in December.  For every occurence, you lose £70.  This system also includes a "Return to Work" system including completion of a self-certification form; our T & Cs include 10 days paid sickness per year.  To be honest, we don't have a major issue with sickness absence.  I don't know whether it's down to being a medium-sized company of 50 and our work ethics and culture.

    Regards, Johan 

    • Hi Johan,

      Thank you so much for replying.

      That's a really interesting way of doing things, in terms of incentives. How did you decide upon £70?

      I think this is something which may work in the business I'm in, from the perspective of the employee being in control of how much their reward is, however not so sure the business would want to invest so much money (we have roughly 1,000 employees at head office alone).

      It'll certainly be a suggested method I put forward though - especially as I'm never usually ill :-)

      Thank you again

      Sarah

  • Hi Sarah

    Yes the Bradford Factor can be a tricky one to explain to employees, where I used to work we kept it to a simple trigger system.

    Where if the employee has 3 instances of absence in a rolling 12 month period this would mean a trigger was met and then the capability process would be inititated.

    I also found a couple of useful articles which may help

    http://www.acas.org.uk/?articleid=4597

    If you have access to XPertHR there is a whole article on your  topic there too:

    http://www.xperthr.co.uk/how-to/how-to-set-absence-triggers-and-tar...

    All the best

    Sarah

    • Hi Sarah,

      Thank you so much for your reply.

      Both articles are really interesting, thank you. Hopefully we can come to an agreement on a new method.

      Thank you again

      Sarah

      • Hi Sarah,

        We use a similar model to one that Sarah has spoke about above. 

        We have two trigger points that an employee can hit:

        Trigger A :   2 or more periods of absences or 5+ days in a 13 week period.

        Trigger B: 3 or more periods of absence or 10+ days in a 6 months period.

        If an employee hits one of the triggers for the first time their lien manager has an informal meeting with them and an absence concern letter is then issued. If an employee hits any further triggers within the same period then the employee is invited to a formal capability hearing.

        We rolled out new company Policy's in March 2015 and this was part of our new Absence Management Policy and we have seen a significant reduction in absence.

        Amy

        • Hi Amy,

          Thank you so much for replying.

          It sounds like something which might work quite well within the business I'm in, especially with it being so much more straight forward than the Bradford Factor, not only to explain to a manager (this can be quite frustrating at times) but from an employee perspective. It's also good to hear it's worked so well for you!!

          Thank you again, really appreciate the feedback

          Sarah

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