Hime wrote:Moggy wrote:Hime wrote:OrangeRKN wrote:An objective measure of someone's sickness record is just their sickness record, unmodified. Using some arbitrary formula to lend more weight to more short term absences over less long term absences is... pretty much a load of rubbish. Especially consider that the original intent of the Bradford factor is to measure the impact of absence on an organisation, not the honesty of the absent individual, and it's largely misapplied. Why should a measure of the impact of absence relate in any way to the discipline of employees?
I guess if someone is a frequently high scorer on the measure of absence that it indicates they should be reviewed?
To be honest I just like the fact that I'm theory everyone should be treated the same and you can't have managers treating absence differently.
That doesn’t work in the real world though does it? Somebody who has underlying health problems should probably get more understanding than somebody who is 100% healthy.
The Bradford Score is lazy. It takes a formula and disregards any human aspect or any difficult decisions. Have a high score thanks to norovirus and then the Coronavirus? strawberry float you! We will treat you exactly the same as the person who rang in with a headache (that we all know was really a hangover). Do you have an issue with migraines? strawberry float off! You are as bad as hangover bloke!
Every workplace is different, the Bradford Score probably works in some places. But it is used in way too many workplaces just to punish people and discourage them from taking sick leave. Which is a bad thing for all of us, because diseases are going to spread much more easily when we use fear to force people into an office.
Of course but you'd expect the person with underlying health problems to be treated differently anyway wouldn't you?
I still think that a work place that wants to discourage sick leave will do so anyway but I can sort of see the sense in a system that weights a number of absences as 14 separate counts of leave is more likely to require review than 14 days consecutively. Either way I think your companies method of financially penalising people for sickness is terrible.
OR is putting it better than me, but the problem is that companies/HR departments/managers are not looking at the reasons, all they do is concentrate on the score itself.
If somebody has 14 separate absences, then you would hope that their manager would have an idea of why. If it is “hungover on a Monday” then they know that action needs to be taken. If it is “has cancer, sick from chemotherapy” then the manager should know that there is no action needed. To be fair I don’t know if my company would treat cancer the same as a hangover, but acknowledging this ruins my hyperbole.
The trouble by making it a score is that upper management and HR impose it on everyone. Because it is a “fair” way of treating everybody “equally” they end up actually penalising those who are genuine, while those playing the system can get around it by keeping an eye on their score and bunking off in other ways.
And 14 absences would be wonderful, my company is imposing harsh sanctions after 2 or 3 occurrences. Which is a real problem as people are coming in with norovirus, heavy colds and other assorted illnesses that I really don’t want to catch.
As a general tool the Bradford Score probably isn’t bad in and of itself. But as a firm rule, that applies to everybody equally, it is appalling.