Bradford Factor

What the Bradford Factor is

The Bradford Factor (معامل برادفورد) is a score that an establishment calculates for each employee over a stated measurement period. It uses two inputs: the number of times the employee was absent, and the total number of days of absence. The score rests on an assumption: repeated short absences disrupt work more than one long absence of the same number of days. To reflect that assumption, the formula squares the number of absences, so frequency weighs more in the score than length.

The factor is an internal measure that an establishment adopts to sort patterns of absence. It is not a rule of the Saudi Labor Law (نظام العمل). It differs from the absenteeism rate, which is the share of unplanned absence days in the work days available and does not show how many separate absences produced those days.

The formula

The score equals S² × D, where:

• S is the number of absences, called spells, in the measurement period. A spell is one run of continuous absence, so three consecutive days of absence form one spell.
• D is the total number of days of absence in the same period, whether the days are continuous or separate.

The formula does not fix the measurement period. The establishment chooses it, for example a rolling year or a contract year. A different period gives a different score, so the establishment states the period with every score.

Why the number of spells is squared

The figures below are assumed, to show the arithmetic. An employee is absent for six days in the period:

• One spell of six consecutive days gives 1 × 1 × 6 = 6.
• Three spells of two days each give 3 × 3 × 6 = 54.
• Six spells of one day each give 6 × 6 × 6 = 216.

The six days are the same in all three cases, yet the score is nine times higher in the second case and thirty-six times higher in the third (54 ÷ 6 = 9 and 216 ÷ 6 = 36). With ten days of absence, one spell gives 10, two spells give 40 (2 × 2 × 10), five spells give 250 (5 × 5 × 10) and ten spells give 1,000 (10 × 10 × 10).

What counts as one spell

The establishment defines a spell, and the definition changes the score. Take an employee who is absent for one day before the weekly rest day and for one day after it. If the establishment counts the two days as one spell because only a rest day separates them, the score is 1 × 1 × 2 = 2. If it counts them as two spells, the score is 2 × 2 × 2 = 8. The difference is a factor of four for a single event. The establishment writes its rule for a spell before the first calculation and applies it to everyone in the same way.

The figures come from the attendance record, so a correction to that record can change a score. How attendance entries are corrected is explained in attendance regularisation.

A worked example: six employees and an assumed threshold

An establishment checks each employee’s score over a period of one year and has chosen a threshold of 200 for opening a conversation with an employee. The threshold and the figures are assumed, to show the arithmetic:

• Employee A was absent once, for thirty days, and scores 1 × 1 × 30 = 30.
• Employee B was absent twice, for fifteen days each time, and scores 2 × 2 × 30 = 120.
• Employee C was absent four times, for twelve days in total, and scores 4 × 4 × 12 = 192.
• Employee D was absent six times, for one day each time, and scores 6 × 6 × 6 = 216.
• Employee E was absent ten times, for one day each time, and scores 10 × 10 × 10 = 1,000.
• Employee F was absent once, for three days, and scores 1 × 1 × 3 = 3.

The threshold of 200 selects D and E. It does not select A, who was absent for thirty days, because A’s absence was one continuous spell and the squared term stays at 1. Employee C scores 192, which is eight below the threshold, so C is not selected either.

What the Saudi texts say about absence

We read three provisions that deal with absence. Each of them counts days, and one of them also takes account of repetition of the violation. None of them contains a formula that squares the number of spells:

• Sick leave, Article 117 of the Labor Law. A worker whose illness is established is entitled to paid sick leave for the first thirty days, to sick leave on three quarters of the wage for the next sixty days, and to sick leave without pay for the thirty days after that, within one year. The Article applies whether the leaves are continuous or separate. The year is the one that starts on the date of the first sick leave.
• Article 80 of the Labor Law. It permits termination of the contract without an end of service award, notice or compensation in nine specified cases, on condition that the worker is given the chance to state the reasons for objecting. One case is absence without a legitimate reason. The Article sets out when a contract may be terminated, and it does not set a limit on how much absence is permitted.
• The schedule in the Model Work Regulation (Annex 1 of the Implementing Regulations of the Labor Law). It has rows for absence without written permission or an acceptable excuse, graded by the number of days: one day, then continuous absence of two to six days, of seven to ten days, and of eleven to fourteen days. It has two further rows. One covers interruption of work without a legitimate reason for more than fifteen continuous days. The other covers intermittent absence without a legitimate reason whose periods together exceed thirty days in the contract year.

The schedule lists its penalties by occurrence: first time, second time, third time and fourth time. Article 61 of the Model Work Regulation (Annex 1) provides that a penalty is not made heavier when 180 days have passed since the worker was notified of the penalty for the earlier violation. Article 68 of the Labor Law provides the same. The Model Work Regulation is an annex to the Implementing Regulations and not a provision of the Labor Law, so it binds an establishment only to the extent that the establishment has adopted it in its work organisation regulation (لائحة تنظيم العمل).

Article 66 of the Labor Law lists the disciplinary penalties that an employer may impose: a warning, a fine, deprivation of a raise or its postponement, postponement of promotion, suspension from work without pay, and dismissal in the cases that the Law provides. Deprivation of a raise and postponement of a promotion are each limited to one year, in the case of a raise or promotion that the employer has set. Article 67 of the Labor Law bars the employer from imposing a penalty that is not in the Law or in the work organisation regulation.

A high score does not create a penalty. An employer that wants to attach a measure to a score needs the act attributed to the worker to be a violation set out in the establishment’s approved work organisation regulation. This is our reading of Articles 66 and 67 of the Labor Law, and it is not a text on the Bradford Factor. The disciplinary measure and what is recorded in it are described in disciplinary action and the disciplinary record sheet.

What distorts a reading of the score

• Mixing absence with an excuse and absence without one. The formula does not know the reason for an absence. The texts distinguish between established sick leave and absence without a legitimate reason.
• Counting leave that the Law provides. If sick leave and other leave provided by the Labor Law are counted in the score, it includes absence that the Law grants to the worker as a right. The establishment decides before the calculation whether such leave is counted.
• Using the score as the sole basis for a decision. A high figure points to a pattern and does not explain it. The establishment asks for the reason before any measure.
• Overlooking disability. Item 4 of Article 61 of the Labor Law bars distinction between workers on the basis of disability. The ban on discrimination on that basis and the arrangements that facilitate the work are discussed in employment of persons with disabilities. The establishment should decide how it treats the score of a worker whose absence arises from a disability. This is a practical recommendation, and it is not a text on the factor.
• Recording the reason in the same table. The score needs the dates of absence and does not need the reasons. Adding the reason for a sickness absence to the table adds health data, and health data is sensitive data under Article 1 of the Personal Data Protection Law, PDPL (نظام حماية البيانات الشخصية). The establishment’s position as the controller of that data is described in employee data privacy.

How a threshold is chosen

The threshold is an internal decision of the establishment, and it can be derived from the establishment’s data. The steps are these: calculate each employee’s score over one period, rank the scores, see how many employees lie above each candidate value, and choose a value that opens conversations with a number of employees that management can follow up seriously.

Suppose that an establishment has forty employees and that the scores of three of them lie above 200. A threshold of 200 opens three conversations, which is 7.5% of the employees (3 ÷ 40). The figures are assumed. The point is that a threshold is a decision about how many conversations management can handle, and it is not a number to be carried from one establishment to another.

A score is used together with other measures. Presenteeism concerns an employee who is at work and not productive, which no attendance record shows. Calculating a score is one use of the employee data described in HR analytics.

Can a worker be dismissed because of a high score?

A score alone is not a ground for dismissal under Article 80 of the Labor Law. None of the nine cases in that Article rests on a score calculated from the number of spells. One of them is absence of the worker without a legitimate reason for more than thirty days in one contract year, or for more than fifteen continuous days. The Article requires a written warning from the employer before dismissal, after twenty days of absence in the first case and after ten days of absence in the second, and it requires that the worker be allowed to state the reasons for objecting.

The criterion in that case is the number of days of absence without a legitimate reason. A worker who is absent in ten separate spells of one day each scores 1,000 and has ten days of absence, so the worker reaches neither of the two thresholds in that case.

In the sources we reviewed, we found no text in the Labor Law or its Implementing Regulations that sets a permitted number of absence spells, or a score that counts as a ground for a measure. The threshold remains a choice for the establishment, within the limits of its work organisation regulation.

This is an explanation of the concept and of the statutory provisions cited, not legal advice.