Absenteeism Rate
Unplanned absence as a percentage of the working time that was available.
Absenteeism rate is total days lost to unplanned absence divided by total available working days, expressed as a percentage. Available days is headcount multiplied by scheduled working days in the period.
The word doing the work is "unplanned". Approved leave taken as intended is not absenteeism — it is an entitlement being used. Folding planned leave into the figure produces a number that rises when a leave policy is working properly, which is the opposite of useful.
A single rate hides the distinction that matters operationally: one person absent for twenty days and twenty people absent for one day each produce the same rate and mean entirely different things. This is what the Bradford Factor tries to capture, by weighting the number of separate absence spells more heavily than their total length.
The Bradford Factor is a management heuristic rather than a statistical or legal standard, and the weighting it applies is a value judgement built into the formula. It is also capable of penalising an employee with a genuine intermittent condition, so using it as an automatic trigger rather than as a prompt to have a conversation carries real risk.
What varies
Organisation. Whether to count part-days, and where planned leave ends and unplanned absence begins, are both local decisions.
Also called: absence rate, absenteeism percentage.
This is a description of the law as it stands, not legal advice. Back to the glossary.
In the product
Attendance Management
Biometric, mobile and geo-fenced — one attendance record.
- Biometric device integration, geo-fenced mobile punch, web and kiosk capture
- Multi-site and multi-shift rosters in a single view
- Regularisation requests with a manager approval chain