Separate occasions, usually over a rolling 12 months
All working days lost across those spells
162
Medium — worth an informal chat
Most policies suggest a supportive conversation around this level.
3 × 3 × 18 = 162
What the number usually means.
0 – 49Low. Nothing to act on — ordinary life happening at an ordinary rate.
50 – 199Medium. Often the point for an informal, supportive check-in — is everything alright, is there a pattern, does anything need adjusting.
200 – 449High. Many policies treat this as the trigger for a formal absence review meeting.
450 +Serious. Most policies escalate here — formal process, occupational health referral, or both.
Two honest caveats. Every employer sets its own thresholds — the bands above are common conventions, not law, so your organisation's absence policy is the one that counts. And the Bradford Factor is a blunt instrument: it cannot tell a disability-related absence from a duvet day, and using it without human judgement, or without regard to the Equality Act, gets employers into trouble. It is a prompt for a conversation, not a verdict.
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