Every HR person and manager understands that managing absence is a fact of life in the modern workplace. In fact, accommodating an employee’s need for time away from the office is widely accepted as good business practice, as this can support wellbeing, prevent presenteeism and serve as an effective retention tool.

However, you may have an employee whose tendency to take time off goes beyond the boundaries of what you would consider to be reasonable. This can damage your productivity, profitability and morale.

But what exactly qualifies as ‘excessive absenteeism’? Well, this isn’t defined in law, and will therefore largely depend on the parameters set in your company’s absence policy.

As the needs of every business and industry will differ, your policy on excessive absenteeism will differ too. Within your absence policy, you should clearly spell out your specific expectations in regard to attendance – one widely-used method is to establish a trigger point, based on number of days’ absence.

A common value is more than three occasions and/or 10 working days in any rolling six-month period, but employers can use their discretion to set the levels or patterns of sickness absence that will prompt action under the organisation’s absence management procedure.

Another common way to measure absence of all types, and determine when absence becomes excessive, is known as the Bradford Factor. This is based on the theory that short, frequent, unplanned absences are more disruptive to organisations than longer absences and so they attract a higher score. Bradford Factor scores are based on the frequency and length of an employee’s absence during a defined period, usually 52 weeks. The score is usually arrived at by squaring the number of instances of absence and then multiplying that by the days of absence. That weighting means someone who has three periods of absence of two days each will score higher than someone who has one period of six days off.

Setting triggers will help you to treat employees consistently. Make sure the trigger is clearly communicated within your absence policy so that employees understand what the organisation defines as excessive absenteeism.

Keep in mind that you may need to adapt these sickness absence trigger points for disabled employees as part of your duty to make reasonable adjustments.