To be worried about Bradford score

[Differentcorner]

Please can someone help. I have been offered my dream job but am terrified they will withdraw the offer when they find out I have a Bradford score of 68. I have not taken any other time off in the last 5 years but this year had some gynae issues resulting in two absences one of 3 days and another of 14. Do you think they will turn me away? Read somewhere a score of 50 equates to a verbal warning and another policy that would only consider that at >125

tams that's terrible. I hate all this " you can't be sick for xx months".
It happened to me. While my mum was sick I ran out of leave so applied for flexible working and was rejected. I couldn't afford to take unpaid. So ended up working 37 hours mon to Fri, traveling 200 miles on Friday night to be with her making the same journey back Sunday night and starting the same week again.
Needless to say I got very run down and got sick. Took a week off sick cos I was sick.
When she died I just crashed completely. Got three days bereavement leave to help with funeral then my gp signed me off two weeks.
I also got a warning and told I couldn't take another sick day for 6 months or I'd get a disciplinary.

I had gone 25 years in the workforce and never heard of Bradford score until my last job. A score of 80 was our trigger point (not mine, I don’t like it and prefer to use my judgement). Your score is quite high compared to what I saw in my department (most people were single figures) but I cannot imagine it would ever be disclosed to a third party anyway and I expect a lot have never heard of a Bradford score.

Bradford is really tough on people who have conditions that cause frequent, short term absence imo.

I prefer the old school method of having managers who have the nous to know who's taking the piss and who isn't, although I concede that that is open to abuse and favouritism.

None of us can say how strict this new job is. My work has Bradford score on our HR portal but its never used, we go with a 3 occasions or a certain number of days within a 13 week rolling period triggers a chat with HR to see if there are any adjustments to be made, then it's a more formal meeting then another formal meeting then you have to provide gp notes for any further illness then more formal meetings. And we get 21 paid sickness days in a rolling year. We are really quite accommodating of illness glares at folk who still come in and cough all over everything

Stop worrying. I think your absence level would have to be ridiculous and unexplained or them to be a very strict employer for them to withdraw your offer.

Congratulations on the offer.

We use the same thing, as a line manager I wouldn’t be worried about a Bradford score of 68. Our trigger points are 225 points, 5 absences in a year or 28 days in one go. This gives us the chance to offer support. I have a staff member with ms, I have things in place to support them and they get a bit of leeway with their absence. I also have someone who has been off for a year with a serious life threatening condition. I am not using the Bradford system for them as they would fail it and I won’t do that to someone who has what they have.

It does show the people that have regular one or two day absences and we can put things in place to help. We can refer to occupational health if needed etc.

Long term illnesses are easier to manage than the short term ones. It is the short term last minute ones that effect our business and if you have an injury, an operation or serious illness you score less for being off for a long time than you would for lots of absences for a headache etc.

Thank you everyone I’d like to think that if they were concerned by it, I’d at least have the chance to explain it. I’ve had an op now and issue all resolved! Guess this is another reason why probationary periods are used so can weed out people who take advantage! If I could have worked I would it was just so painful!

Is this a new employer? How will they even know your Bradford score in your last job?

If its internal I can see that they would but then you talk about a probationary period which wouldn't be applicable if you were making an internal move.

I'm confused.

We have a new sickness policy in work using this and I specifically asked if it was reported to prospective employers in references and they said it wasn't.

Glad it wasn't just me then Nolagerformethanks

Me too!

I don't think you have anything to worry about OP. Firstly the score isn't high enough to trigger any intervention and secondly the chances of such a score being added to a reference are slim to nil.

The Bradford factor is just a way of larger companies keeping an eye out for persistent absence, which is why it is significantly weighted to highlight number of absences rather than total number of days. It is used as a way to highlight possible individual problems in a workforce as a whole rather than tasking each (possible little hitler) local supervisor or manager with making the decisions independently. Hence someone with 4 weeks off for surgery would gain a score of 20 (1 absence, 20 days), someone with 2 lots of 2 weeks off (2 absences, 20 days) would get a score of 80 as the number of absences is squared, but someone with 10 separate odd days off would get a score of 1000. The score is designed only to highlight those people, because if they only looked at the number of days, those with a serious one off illness (like you OP) would have to be treated the same as the Monday morning hangover pisstakers. Thus a score of 68 is clearly someone with one significant period of illness, and no cause for concern. Ironically the one group who are significantly disadvantaged by the Bfactor are those with ongoing significant health issues who struggle in to work when they can, as each subsequent absence starts to exponentially increase their score. in those cases the manager needs to balance and ameliorate the score/the worker's needs. We had a round of redundancy some years back where everyone within a certain department which needed to be halved, was scored on performance, company values, salary, and lost points if their BF was over 50. They had to rethink the scoring system as it was disadvantaging some really dedicated workers who were aceing the performance and values but had had a surgery in the last year, for example. They changed the BF criterion to values over 500, and successfully weeded out the less productive folk, as those data correlated exactly with the poorer scores for performance and company values.

I have gone into work very ill and spread it around due to the absence trigger stuff. My boss even shouted at me once about making him ill, he didn't see the irony when I replied its your sickness policy that makes people do this that means I come in. All of my sickness before that had been with a sick note from the Dr. Its just that I had got to 20 days over a year period. Was just a very very bad year for me.

But in a decent company the absence trigger is just to make the local manager have a proper look, not to penalize the staff member. If a manager knows you have been genuinely ill there should be no issue.
I think that the BF gets the blame when in fact it's the management who aren't being reasonable.

I also thought this was football related