Bradford Factor - sick days

[Wolfie1995B]

Hi all.

So I have chronic anxiety and the way it manifests is picking one thing to worry about exponentially. And this time it's sick days.

So. Over the last 12 month's I have had 8 sick days. 2.5 for a chest infection. 1.5 for migraine. 4 for tonsilitis. My Bradford Factor is 74 .

I am now panicking big time that that time is ridiculously excessive. That I'm going to get fired and that I'll never get a job anywhere else because they will look at my sick days and go "screw that. We aren't having her"

Are these fears justified? Any help? :( :(

This is 100% your anxiety talking. That is not an excessive level of sick leave at all, and it's very unlikely you'll be fired because of it. If you have worked there more than 2 years that would likely constitute unfair dismissal if they did.

It is possible (not necessarily so) that you will have triggered your organisation's Bradford score level for 'concern'. My organisation doesn't use Bradford per se but our 'trigger' is over 15 days absence in 12 months or 4 episodes within 6 months. So at my place you wouldn't have triggered, unless all the episodes were within the last 6 months. But some places are more strict than us.

But anyway, even IF you had 'triggered', all that would happen is your manager would have a chat with you, no HR involved, let you know your absence is a bit on the high side and see if you need any extra support or to see OH. You wouldn't be given a formal warning so it wouldn't need to go on any future reference. And if you applied for a job with that level of sickness absence it might prompt a conversation to check whether it was likely to reoccur but it's by no means likely to lead to you not being offered the job.

Obviously ideally you would try and not have more time off but really try not to worry. Many many people take time off work when they are sick (more than you have!), because that is the sensible thing to do, and if we went around sacking them all there'd be no staff left. Hope you feel better soon, anxiety is a horrible beast

How is your job going, @Wolfie1995B?

If your manager has given you good feedback and you know you are delivering and adding value to your organisation the chances of them getting rid of you (for what sounds like genuine absences due to sickness) are slim.

Absence management tends to be conducted when an employee is not delivering in role, take Fridays and Mondays off habitually aka 'swinging the lead', plus, plus, plus.

Don't worry about it but try to keep absences to a minimum or zero for the foreseeable so your record becomes cleaner over the long term.

Thats no where near a trigger point op, dont worry!

They still have to go through the formal absence management process with you before anything like dismissal, if you have worked there over 2 years especially.

Mine is 474! But that was five days off with norovirus last winter and then three pregnancy-related absences, one of nearly four weeks thanks to hyperemesis. The trigger for absence management in my work (emergency service) is usually four in a year. Obviously nothing is happening to me as I’m pregnant but the aim should be to support the employee if they have ongoing issues. Sometimes, though, you can’t help being ill and it’s better to not go in and either make yourself worse or spread your bugs around.

Our trigger is 5 separate absences in a year. I triggered it once - we had a discussion about the Bradford factor (which my manager had never heard of,) and that it was just a run of bad luck, and my manager was satisfied I was genuine (could have showed him the nasty antibiotics I was on at that point.)

Some of it is to catch patterns of skiving. But it's also to check if people need extra support or have developed a condition which might need reasonable adjustments and so on. How well it's actually handled will depend massively on the manager in question, I think.