Bradford Factor Calculator
What is a Bradford Factor score?
The Bradford Factor is S × S × D: the number of separate absences squared, times the total days lost. Five separate absences over ten days scores 250. The same ten days taken as one absence scores 10 — twenty-five times lower, from identical time off. There is no standard trigger score; organisations choose their own.
Five single days off score 125. One absence of five days scores 5. Identical days lost, twenty-five times the score.
That is the whole point of the Bradford Factor, and it is also the reason it has to be handled carefully. Put your own figures in.
Built by Muhammad Shahzeb Anwar, MSc Industrial and Organizational Psychology, who also writes the paid version of this tool. The warning printed beside every score here is the part most Bradford calculators leave out.
Your Bradford Factor
Two numbers are all it needs. The third is optional and only prices the days.
How the Bradford Factor works
The formula is B = S × S × D, where S is the number of separate absences and D is the total working days lost. Because the number of spells is squared and the days are not, the score is far more sensitive to how often somebody is away than to how long they are away for.
That is deliberate. It was designed on the argument that unplanned, unpredictable absence is more disruptive to a team than one long absence that can be planned around. Whether that argument holds in your workplace is a judgement, not arithmetic - but the arithmetic is at least worth seeing before anybody acts on it.
The table above runs the same days lost across one to six spells so you can see the curve rather than take it on trust.
The part most calculators leave out
A high Bradford Factor describes a pattern, not a person and not a reason. Frequent, short, unpredictable absence is exactly the shape of a chronic condition, a disability, a mental health condition, a pregnancy, or a parent whose child keeps being sent home from school.
Every one of those can produce a score that looks alarming next to a colleague who took one long holiday-shaped absence, and none of them is a performance problem. Several are protected characteristics in most jurisdictions.
So the honest use of this number is as a prompt for a conversation: something that tells you to ask, not something that tells you what to do. Used as an automatic trigger it will, reliably, single out the people least able to do anything about it.
Why the threshold you were given is arbitrary
There is no correct trigger score. Organisations pick 125, or 200, or 500, and those numbers came from somewhere else - usually another organisation that also picked them.
A threshold is a policy decision about how much unpredictability you are willing to absorb. It is not a finding, and this tool will not invent one for you.
What this will not tell you
This calculates a score. It does not tell you whether an absence record is a problem, and it has no view on what to do about one. It cannot see the reason for a single day off, and the reason is the part that matters. It is not medical advice, not legal advice, and not a substitute for asking the person.
Questions people actually ask
What is a Bradford Factor score of 125?
It is five separate absences totalling five days: 5 x 5 x 5. It is often quoted as a trigger point, but there is no standard threshold - organisations choose their own, and the choice is a policy decision rather than a finding.
Why do five single days score more than one five-day absence?
Because the number of separate spells is squared and the days lost are not. Five spells over five days is 5 x 5 x 5 = 125; one spell over five days is 1 x 1 x 5 = 5. The formula is built on the argument that unpredictable absence is more disruptive than planned absence.
Can I use the Bradford Factor to discipline someone?
The score is a prompt for a conversation, not a decision. Frequent short absence is also the ordinary pattern of a disability or a chronic condition, several of which are protected characteristics, so acting on the number alone tends to single out the people least able to change it.
Is my data sent anywhere?
No. The calculation runs in your browser. Nothing is uploaded, nothing is stored, and there is no sign-up.
Cite this tool
Free to use and free to quote. If a figure here is useful in something you are writing, a link back is all that is asked.
Muhammad Shahzeb Anwar, MSc Industrial and Organizational Psychology. Bradford Factor Calculator. Shahzeb Speaks. https://www.shahzebspeaks.com/bradford-factor-calculator/
The other free tools
Each one answers a single question and refuses the ones it cannot. All free, none asks for an email address.
Doing this for a whole workforce?
The paid Absence Cost and Pattern Tracker takes the whole team at once: days lost, what they cost, the Bradford Factor per person, and the same warning printed beside every score. It refuses to report an absence rate from fewer than thirty people, because below that one person's bad winter moves the figure.
See the full tool