Business Values & Culture (AQA A Level Business): Exam Questions

Source B: Netflix

Netflix is one of the world's leading entertainment services. It employs around 13 000 people. The company has over 430 million shares. It has never paid a dividend. It has more than 247 million paid memberships in over 190 countries. Members enjoy TV series, films and games across a wide variety of genres and in over 30 languages. Members can play, pause and resume watching Netflix's content as much as they want: anytime and anywhere. Netflix's competitors include Disney+, Amazon Prime, HBO and Paramount.

The use of advanced digital technology affects all aspects of Netflix's operations. For example, it:

• enables the smooth streaming of content

• adjusts the quality of the video for the platform it is viewed on

• enables the production of high-quality content

• enhances users' experience on the Netflix site through features such as efficient search functions and personalised recommendations of content.

Netflix aims for diversity in its workforce. Its employees are paid top rates for what they do. Netflix claims it has a unique culture. Netflix's leaders highlight the importance of collaboration and creativity. 3% of Netflix employees work remotely compared to a national average of 14%. There are very few rules at the business because Netflix trusts employees to make the right choices. Employees are empowered and given the freedom to decide what to do and delegation is high but, in return, must take responsibility for their actions. The company expects employees to be high performers and excellent team players. Underperformers are asked to leave. For every significant decision, Netflix identifies an "informed captain of the ship". This person is an expert in their area and is responsible for listening to other people's views and then making a judgment call on the right way forward.

Source: information sourced from Netflix, 2024

Assess how important the culture of Netflix is likely to be in determining its competitiveness.

Source A: Revolut

Revolut is a digital bank. It has no branches: customers open an account on their phone, usually in minutes, and use it to spend, send and exchange money. It was founded in London in 2015 by Nik Storonsky and has grown faster than almost any European business of its size.

The numbers are remarkable. In 2024 it had 52.5 million retail customers, up 38%, revenue of £3.1 billion, up 72%, and net profit of £790 million. In 2025 customers rose another 30% to 68.3 million, group revenue rose 46% to 6.0 billion US dollars and profit before tax reached 2.3 billion US dollars, a profit margin of 38%. A fundraising in 2025 valued the company at 75 billion US dollars. The workforce passed 10 000 in April 2024 and reached 12 200 during 2025.

That growth has been built on a demanding set of stated values. Revolut tells its people to “get it done” and to “never settle”, alongside “deliver wow”, “think deeper” and “dream team”. Performance is measured against quarterly targets, and the company says the values are not posters on a wall but the basis on which people are hired, promoted and let go.

The culture that produces those results also attracts criticism. On the review site Glassdoor, 76% of employees say they would recommend Revolut to a friend, but the company scores 3.6 out of 5 for work-life balance and 3.8 for culture and values. A number of reviews describe meetings in which people are humiliated, managers who lack interpersonal skills, and so heavy a focus on quarterly targets that employees lose sight of anything else. Commentators have questioned whether people who are overworked and burnt out can be expected to be good colleagues, and the chief executive's management style has been criticised for creating long hours and high staff turnover.

Revolut has begun work on changing parts of its culture while insisting that the high-performance core of it stays.

Source: Revolut annual report 2024, Revolut results announcements 2025, and published reviews

Appendix A: Selected data for Revolut

Source: Revolut

Appendix B: Revolut's stated values and what employees say

Source: Revolut and published reviews

Assess whether Revolut's culture has been the main reason for its financial success.

Source A: Harrowgate Mutual

Harrowgate Mutual sells home and motor insurance. It employs 300 people in Leeds, takes £86 million in premiums a year and made an operating profit of £4.2 million in the year to March 2025. It is a mutual, which means it has no shareholders and is owned by its policyholders.

Three years ago the regulator found that Harrowgate's telephone sales team had been selling add-on cover that many customers did not need and in some cases could never have claimed on. The company was fined £7.4 million and has paid £11.9 million back to customers.

Nobody at Harrowgate set out to mis-sell. What happened was that 68% of a salesperson's pay came from commission, the commission was paid on the number of add-ons sold rather than on whether the customer kept the policy, and the weekly sales table was read out every Monday morning. Managers were promoted on the same numbers. When one team leader raised concerns in 2021 she was told the figures were the figures.

The new chief executive, Ama Boateng, arrived in early 2025 from a larger insurer. She has cut commission to 15% of pay, stopped the Monday sales table, created a staff forum that meets the board twice a year, and rewritten the company's values so that the first one is now “sell only what the customer needs”.

Some of it has worked. Complaints upheld against Harrowgate by the Financial Ombudsman Service have fallen sharply. Some of it has not. Sales of add-ons have fallen further than expected, a third of the original sales team has left, and several long-serving managers say privately that the company has swung from one extreme to the other and that nobody is now willing to ask a customer for anything.

Source: Harrowgate Mutual

Appendix A: What happened at Harrowgate Mutual

Source: Harrowgate Mutual

Appendix B: Complaints and sales at Harrowgate Mutual

Source: Harrowgate Mutual

Assess the cost to Harrowgate Mutual of the culture that led to the mis-selling.

Calculate Harrowgate Mutual's operating profit margin to support your answer.

Source A: Linmoor Software Ltd

Linmoor Software Ltd writes scheduling software for care homes and veterinary practices. Two developers founded it in 2017, it now employs 70 people, and in the year to March 2025 it had revenue of £8.6 million and an operating profit of £940 000. It keeps one office in Leeds with 24 desks, and 58 of its 70 people work mainly from home.

For the first few years everybody could hear everybody else. Decisions were made in the room, the founders knew what every customer wanted, and nobody needed telling what the company was for. Twenty-eight of the current staff joined in the last twelve months, nine of them live outside the United Kingdom, and the company works across four time zones.

The annual survey has picked up what that has done. In 2022, when there were eighteen people, 88% said they knew who decided things. The same question now gets 44%. Only 32% have met most of their colleagues in person, and 37% have never met a founder.

Nothing has been written down. There is no description of how the company works, no employee forum, and most decisions are still announced in a group chat. The six team leads have had no leadership training, and the longest any of them has been in the role is fourteen months. Both founders still personally approve any spending over £2 000.

The whole company is together in one place once a year. The board has been asked whether that is enough.

Source: Linmoor Software Ltd

Appendix A: Linmoor Software Ltd selected data, year to March 2025

Source: Linmoor Software Ltd

Appendix B: What Linmoor's people said in 2022, and what they say now

Share agreeing, percentages

Source: Analyst

Assess the effect that growing from 18 employees to 70 has had on Linmoor Software Ltd's culture.

Calculate Linmoor Software Ltd's sales per employee to support your answer.

Source A: Monzo

Monzo is a digital bank with no branches. In the year to 31 March 2025 revenue passed £1 billion for the first time, rising 48% to £1.2 billion, and adjusted profit before tax went from £13.9 million to £113.9 million. It now has more than 12 million customers, including about 625 000 business customers. Of the 2.4 million customers who joined during the year, more than two thirds came by word of mouth.

It grew up on an unusually open way of working. Most internal channels could be read by anybody in the company, decisions were argued out where everyone could see them, and employees were expected to say when they thought something was wrong. That was straightforward when there were a few hundred people.

There are now 5 275, a rise of 34% in a year, and more than half of them have been there under two years. The culture survey has moved with the size. The share who say they can see the decisions that affect them being made has fallen from 84% to 46%, and the share who say they can raise a concern and be heard from 88% to 63%.

Two other things have changed. Monzo is a regulated bank, so anything affecting customers' money now has to follow a formal process rather than a conversation in a channel, and some information cannot be visible to 5 275 people at all. And 61% of employees work mainly from home, across three offices, with 72% on London contracts.

The board is preparing to launch in two more countries and wants to know what it is prepared to change.

Source: Monzo Bank Limited Annual Report for the year ended 31 March 2025

Appendix A: Monzo, published figures for the year to 31 March 2025

Source: Monzo Bank Limited

Appendix B: What Monzo's people said at 1 000 employees, and what they say now

Source: Analyst

Assess how far Monzo's culture has been a cause of its growth.

Calculate Monzo's sales per employee to support your answer.

Source A: Harrowgate Mutual

Harrowgate Mutual sells home and motor insurance. It employs 300 people in Leeds, takes £86 million in premiums a year and made an operating profit of £4.2 million in the year to March 2025. It is a mutual, which means it has no shareholders and is owned by its policyholders.

Three years ago the regulator found that Harrowgate's telephone sales team had been selling add-on cover that many customers did not need and in some cases could never have claimed on. The company was fined £7.4 million and has paid £11.9 million back to customers.

Nobody at Harrowgate set out to mis-sell. What happened was that 68% of a salesperson's pay came from commission, the commission was paid on the number of add-ons sold rather than on whether the customer kept the policy, and the weekly sales table was read out every Monday morning. Managers were promoted on the same numbers. When one team leader raised concerns in 2021 she was told the figures were the figures.

The new chief executive, Ama Boateng, arrived in early 2025 from a larger insurer. She has cut commission to 15% of pay, stopped the Monday sales table, created a staff forum that meets the board twice a year, and rewritten the company's values so that the first one is now “sell only what the customer needs”.

Some of it has worked. Complaints upheld against Harrowgate by the Financial Ombudsman Service have fallen sharply. Some of it has not. Sales of add-ons have fallen further than expected, a third of the original sales team has left, and several long-serving managers say privately that the company has swung from one extreme to the other and that nobody is now willing to ask a customer for anything.

Source: Harrowgate Mutual

Appendix B: Complaints and sales at Harrowgate Mutual

Source: Harrowgate Mutual

Appendix D: Two ways of making sure Harrowgate sells only what customers need

Policies sold last year = 128 000, at an average premium of £672

Source: Analyst

Harrowgate Mutual is considering two ways of making sure it sells only what customers need:

Option 1: pay salespeople a salary with a small bonus

Option 2: keep commission but check every sale before it completes

Evaluate both options and recommend which one Harrowgate Mutual should choose.

Calculate Harrowgate Mutual's revenue under Option 1 to support your answer.

Source A: Linmoor Software Ltd

Linmoor Software Ltd writes scheduling software for care homes and veterinary practices. Two developers founded it in 2017, it now employs 70 people, and in the year to March 2025 it had revenue of £8.6 million and an operating profit of £940 000. It keeps one office in Leeds with 24 desks, and 58 of its 70 people work mainly from home.

For the first few years everybody could hear everybody else. Decisions were made in the room, the founders knew what every customer wanted, and nobody needed telling what the company was for. Twenty-eight of the current staff joined in the last twelve months, nine of them live outside the United Kingdom, and the company works across four time zones.

The annual survey has picked up what that has done. In 2022, when there were eighteen people, 88% said they knew who decided things. The same question now gets 44%. Only 32% have met most of their colleagues in person, and 37% have never met a founder.

Nothing has been written down. There is no description of how the company works, no employee forum, and most decisions are still announced in a group chat. The six team leads have had no leadership training, and the longest any of them has been in the role is fourteen months. Both founders still personally approve any spending over £2 000.

The whole company is together in one place once a year. The board has been asked whether that is enough.

Source: Linmoor Software Ltd

Appendix B: What Linmoor's people said in 2022, and what they say now

Share agreeing, percentages

Source: Analyst

Appendix C: How Linmoor is led and how decisions get made

Source: Analyst

Appendix D: Two ways of holding the culture together

70 employees, operating profit £940 000

Source: Analyst

Linmoor Software Ltd is considering two ways of holding its culture together:

Option 1: bring the whole company together in person four times a year

Option 2: write down how the company works and train the six team leads

Evaluate both options and recommend which one Linmoor Software Ltd should choose.

Calculate the annual cost of Option 1 to support your answer.

Source A: Monzo

Monzo is a digital bank with no branches. In the year to 31 March 2025 revenue passed £1 billion for the first time, rising 48% to £1.2 billion, and adjusted profit before tax went from £13.9 million to £113.9 million. It now has more than 12 million customers, including about 625 000 business customers. Of the 2.4 million customers who joined during the year, more than two thirds came by word of mouth.

It grew up on an unusually open way of working. Most internal channels could be read by anybody in the company, decisions were argued out where everyone could see them, and employees were expected to say when they thought something was wrong. That was straightforward when there were a few hundred people.

There are now 5 275, a rise of 34% in a year, and more than half of them have been there under two years. The culture survey has moved with the size. The share who say they can see the decisions that affect them being made has fallen from 84% to 46%, and the share who say they can raise a concern and be heard from 88% to 63%.

Two other things have changed. Monzo is a regulated bank, so anything affecting customers' money now has to follow a formal process rather than a conversation in a channel, and some information cannot be visible to 5 275 people at all. And 61% of employees work mainly from home, across three offices, with 72% on London contracts.

The board is preparing to launch in two more countries and wants to know what it is prepared to change.

Source: Monzo Bank Limited Annual Report for the year ended 31 March 2025

Appendix B: What Monzo's people said at 1 000 employees, and what they say now

Source: Analyst

Appendix C: How Monzo is organised and where its people work

Source: Analyst

Appendix D: Two ways of keeping the culture as Monzo gets bigger

Revenue of £1.2bn came from more than 12 million customers.

Source: Analyst

Monzo is considering two ways of keeping its culture as it gets bigger:

Option 1: keep every internal channel open to everyone, as now

Option 2: give every squad a written decision record anyone can read

Evaluate both options and recommend which one Monzo should choose.

Calculate Monzo's sales per employee to support your answer.