Personnel Today
  • Home
    • All PT content
  • Email sign-up
  • Topics
    • HR Practice
    • Employee relations
    • Learning & training
    • Pay & benefits
    • Wellbeing
    • Recruitment & retention
    • HR strategy
    • HR Tech
    • The HR profession
    • Global
    • All HR topics
  • Legal
    • Case law
    • Commentary
    • Flexible working
    • Legal timetable
    • Maternity & paternity
    • Shared parental leave
    • Redundancy
    • TUPE
    • Disciplinary and grievances
    • Employer’s guides
  • AWARDS
    • Personnel Today Awards
    • The RAD Awards
  • Jobs
    • Find a job
    • Jobs by email
    • Careers advice
    • Post a job
  • Brightmine
    • Learn more
    • Products
    • Free trial
    • Request a quote
  • Webinars
  • Advertise
  • OHW+

Personnel Today

Register
Log in
Personnel Today
  • Home
    • All PT content
  • Email sign-up
  • Topics
    • HR Practice
    • Employee relations
    • Learning & training
    • Pay & benefits
    • Wellbeing
    • Recruitment & retention
    • HR strategy
    • HR Tech
    • The HR profession
    • Global
    • All HR topics
  • Legal
    • Case law
    • Commentary
    • Flexible working
    • Legal timetable
    • Maternity & paternity
    • Shared parental leave
    • Redundancy
    • TUPE
    • Disciplinary and grievances
    • Employer’s guides
  • AWARDS
    • Personnel Today Awards
    • The RAD Awards
  • Jobs
    • Find a job
    • Jobs by email
    • Careers advice
    • Post a job
  • Brightmine
    • Learn more
    • Products
    • Free trial
    • Request a quote
  • Webinars
  • Advertise
  • OHW+

AssessmentHR practiceRecruitment & retention

Bowland Solutions support PRS for Music with new integrated performance appraisal and 360 degree feedback platform

by Personnel Today 2 Nov 2009
by Personnel Today 2 Nov 2009

Employing around 800 staff, PRS for Music have lrecently aunched a new tailored online performance appraisal system complete with integrated 360 degree feedback through Bowland Solutions.

With an appraisal process directly linked to bonus, a ‘Forced Distribution’ approach asks managers to place a certain proportion of their staff into tiered categories. In other words, if ratings are low, average, above average, and high, a manager must allocate staff appraisal ratings across each category on a percentage basis.

Seen by many HR Professionals as a more challenging form of appraisal it avoids the classic ‘bell curve’ of appraisal ratings where the majority of employees fall into the ‘average’ category, and means that staff have to out-perform their work colleagues to gain a place in the limited room available in the higher categories, and avoid being pushed down the ranks.

The Approach:

Whilst a decision had already been made at PRS for Music to adopt forced distribution, Bowland Solutions were consulted about how to best implement and manage it online.

Bowland also developed an online calculator which reviews scores across multiple departments. The ethos being that staff are measured against a cross section of personnel, not simply against their direct peers – otherwise high achievers in high achieving teams may find themselves unfairly placed in the lower categories and vice versa.

By tailoring a fully branded PRS for Music online solution, Bowland also designed reports to enable senior managers to monitor and make decisions about the validity of forced distribution. i.e. bespoke reports were created to evaluate the system’s effectiveness, as well as enabling interrogation of the appraisal results.

A number of benefits have already become apparent through the work undertaken with Bowland Solutions:

PRS for Music works to a highly structured process incorporating an online scoring and weighting system aligned to employees’ objectives and values, all resulting in personal development plans.

By developing a fully bespoke, white labelled online solution delivered higher levels of buy-in than an off the shelf package could have achieved. It is an appraisal system that their staff can relate to.

Bowland’s HR expertise, coupled with their in-house software development skills, helped PRS for Music introduce forced distribution without the usual enormous administration burden. An efficient and streamlined process.

All rules and rigour were included to maximise transparency and fairness – a vital ingredient for achieving the desired successful outcome.

Sign up to our weekly round-up of HR news and guidance

Receive the Personnel Today Direct e-newsletter every Wednesday

OptOut
This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Amanda Heath, Executive Director HR, at PRS for Music comments “We were pleased to choose Bowland Solutions for our online appraisal system, based on their fantastic track record of working with us previously and their proven experience of similar projects elsewhere.  By ensuring they fully understood our needs, their tailored approach meant we could get the system that was completely right for us”.


 

Personnel Today

Personnel Today articles are written by an expert team of award-winning journalists who have been covering HR and L&D for many years. Some of our content is attributed to "Personnel Today" for a number of reasons, including: when numerous authors are associated with writing or editing a piece; or when the author is unknown (particularly for older articles).

previous post
Occupational Health Awards 2009: Shortlisted teams
next post
Know how to get value from psychometric tests

You may also like

How neuroscience can unlock employee recognition

22 May 2025

Workers ‘wait and see’ as companies struggle to...

16 May 2025

So what does the election of a new...

9 May 2025

Rumours during recruitment: how should HR respond?

9 May 2025

Teacher apprenticeship route to be tied to school...

9 May 2025

British Steel to resume recruitment

8 May 2025

M&S pauses hiring as it deals with cyber...

2 May 2025

Top 10 HR questions April 2025: increases to...

2 May 2025

Leading with honest feedback: A responsibility in recruitment

24 Apr 2025

Succession planning now ‘more of a priority than...

24 Apr 2025

  • 2025 Employee Communications Report PROMOTED | HR and leadership...Read more
  • The Majority of Employees Have Their Eyes on Their Next Move PROMOTED | A staggering 65%...Read more
  • Prioritising performance management: Strategies for success (webinar) WEBINAR | In today’s fast-paced...Read more
  • Self-Leadership: The Key to Successful Organisations PROMOTED | Eletive is helping businesses...Read more
  • Retaining Female Talent: Four Ways to Reduce Workplace Drop Out PROMOTED | International Women’s Day...Read more

Personnel Today Jobs
 

Search Jobs

PERSONNEL TODAY

About us
Contact us
Browse all HR topics
Email newsletters
Content feeds
Cookies policy
Privacy policy
Terms and conditions

JOBS

Personnel Today Jobs
Post a job
Why advertise with us?

EVENTS & PRODUCTS

The Personnel Today Awards
The RAD Awards
Employee Benefits
Forum for Expatriate Management
OHW+
Whatmedia

ADVERTISING & PR

Advertising opportunities
Features list 2025

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • Linkedin


© 2011 - 2025 DVV Media International Ltd

Personnel Today
  • Home
    • All PT content
  • Email sign-up
  • Topics
    • HR Practice
    • Employee relations
    • Learning & training
    • Pay & benefits
    • Wellbeing
    • Recruitment & retention
    • HR strategy
    • HR Tech
    • The HR profession
    • Global
    • All HR topics
  • Legal
    • Case law
    • Commentary
    • Flexible working
    • Legal timetable
    • Maternity & paternity
    • Shared parental leave
    • Redundancy
    • TUPE
    • Disciplinary and grievances
    • Employer’s guides
  • AWARDS
    • Personnel Today Awards
    • The RAD Awards
  • Jobs
    • Find a job
    • Jobs by email
    • Careers advice
    • Post a job
  • Brightmine
    • Learn more
    • Products
    • Free trial
    • Request a quote
  • Webinars
  • Advertise
  • OHW+