Developing People (AQA A Level Business): Exam Questions

Source A: John Lewis Partnership

The John Lewis Partnership owns the John Lewis department stores and the Waitrose supermarkets. It is not owned by shareholders. It is owned by the people who work in it, who are called Partners rather than employees, and who share in the profits through an annual Partnership Bonus paid as a percentage of pay.

For most of its history that bonus was the thing everybody knew about the business. It was announced each March, it was the same percentage for the chief executive as for a shelf stacker, and it was how the Partnership said what it believed: that the people who do the work should own the business and share what it earns.

Then it stopped. The Partnership paid no bonus for three years. In March 2025 it reported that profits had tripled and still did not pay one, because the money was needed to invest in the business. For the year to January 2026 the bonus came back at 2%, worth about one week's pay, the first since 2022.

The underlying business improved. Partnership sales rose 5% to £13.4 billion and profit before tax, bonus and exceptional items rose 6% to £134 million. Cash generated from operations reached £595 million, up £63 million. The Partnership is investing £108 million in base pay in 2026.

The two halves of the Partnership are very different. Waitrose grew sales 7% to £8.5 billion with an adjusted operating profit of £256 million. John Lewis grew sales 3% to £4.9 billion with an adjusted operating profit of £58 million.

The Partnership is also run differently. It has a written constitution, Partners elect representatives who can question the chief executive, and a Partner can raise a concern through an elected body rather than through their line manager.

Source: John Lewis Partnership full year results, 2025 and 2026

Appendix A: Selected data for the John Lewis Partnership

Source: John Lewis Partnership

Appendix C: The Partnership compared with a conventional retailer

Source: Analyst

Assess the value to the John Lewis Partnership of giving frontline Partners 5.4 days of training a year.

Source A: Ashcombe Academy Trust

Ashcombe Academy Trust runs five secondary schools in the south west of England. It employs 480 people, of whom 285 are teachers, and teaches about 4 100 pupils. Its income last year was £31.4 million, almost all of it from government funding, and it finished the year with a surplus of £400 000.

Its problem is keeping teachers. Fifty-seven left last year. Most did not go to another school: they left teaching. When a class has no teacher the trust books a supply teacher through an agency, at a day rate that has risen every year, and supply teachers rarely mark work or know the pupils.

The chief executive, Dr Helena Marsh, cannot pay more. Teachers' pay is set nationally and the trust has no power to change it. What she can change is everything else: how teachers are appraised, how much notice they get of a timetable change, whether they have time in the school day to plan and mark, and how decisions are taken in each school.

At present every teacher is appraised once a year against three targets, two of which are pupil examination results. Heads of department set the targets in September and review them the following July. Teachers say the appraisal is about proving they are doing their job rather than helping them do it better, and that the parts of the job they find hardest, such as behaviour and workload, are not what they are measured on.

Dr Marsh has two proposals in front of her. Neither of them is more pay, because more pay is not available.

Source: Ashcombe Academy Trust

Appendix B: When teachers leave Ashcombe

Source: Ashcombe Academy Trust

Appendix C: How teachers are appraised, now and as proposed

Source: Ashcombe Academy Trust

Assess whether changing how teachers are appraised would help Ashcombe Academy Trust develop its staff.

Source A: Saltmarsh Soft Drinks Ltd

Saltmarsh Soft Drinks Ltd makes pressed apple juice, elderflower cordial and ginger beer at a small plant in Somerset. It employs 55 people, had revenue of £6.8 million in the year to March 2025 and an operating profit of £412 500.

Pauline Saltmarsh started the company in 1996 with one press and a van. She still knows every employee's name, still tastes every batch, and until this year she signed off every decision that cost more than £500. The workforce is young: the average age is 26, and most of the production team are in their first or second job.

In January she told the board she is reducing to two days a week, and that the business needs to be able to run without her. She has promoted two people from the production floor, Ciara Nolan and Dan Beckworth, to lead production and sales, and has told them she will not overrule them in front of their teams.

It has not been straightforward. Both new leaders have spent their whole working lives being told what to do by Pauline, and both have said they find it difficult to know how much they are allowed to decide. Several of the younger staff have asked who they should now go to, and two have said the company feels less personal than it did.

The board has asked for proposals on keeping people motivated as the founder steps back. Pay at Saltmarsh is already above the local average for food production, so raising it further is not obviously the answer.

Source: Saltmarsh Soft Drinks Ltd

Appendix B: What Saltmarsh employees say

• Employees who responded: 48 of 55

Source: Saltmarsh Soft Drinks Ltd staff survey

Appendix C: How Saltmarsh is run, before and now

Source: Saltmarsh Soft Drinks Ltd

Assess how well Saltmarsh Soft Drinks Ltd has prepared its people for the founder stepping back.

Source A: Richer Sounds

Richer Sounds sells hi-fi, televisions and home cinema equipment from 51 stores and a website. It has always been unusual in how it treats the people who work in it, and in 2019 it did something almost no company of its size has done.

On 10 May 2019 the founder, Julian Richer, transferred 60% of his shares, worth £9.2 million, into an Employee Ownership Trust. The colleagues now own the majority of the business they work in. He also paid every colleague other than the directors a thank-you bonus of £1 000 for every year they had worked there. The average length of service was eight years, and the bill came to about £4 million.

He stepped back from running it. The day-to-day business was left with the existing management board, and a colleagues' advisory council was set up, chaired by a trustee, to put colleagues' views in front of the people making decisions.

The rest of the Richer approach has been in place for far longer. Colleagues get a share of the profit, free use of the company's holiday homes, interest-free loans and a hardship fund they can apply to. Almost nobody leaves. Most vacancies are filled from inside the business, and the shortest time any member of the management board has served is twenty-five years.

That last figure is the one the company is now asked about. A business where everybody stays and everybody is promoted from within has deep knowledge of how it does things, and very little experience of how anybody else does them.

Source: Richer Sounds and Co-operative News

Appendix B: Richer Sounds compared with specialist electrical retail

Source: Analyst

Appendix C: How Richer Sounds grows its own people

Source: Analyst

Assess how well Richer Sounds develops and retains its colleagues.

Source A: Ellerby & Sons Plumbing Ltd

Ellerby & Sons Plumbing Ltd installs and repairs boilers and bathrooms around Doncaster. Mick Ellerby started it twenty-two years ago and still goes out on jobs himself. There are seven people in all: Mick and four other qualified engineers, one apprentice and one administrator who answers the phone and books the work. Revenue in the year to March 2025 was £685 000 and operating profit was £78 000.

Between them the engineers complete about 140 jobs a week, and almost three quarters of the work comes from customers who have used the firm before. They are paid an hourly rate, which is unusual locally: most of the firms Ellerby competes with pay by the job.

That difference shows up in two places. An engineer at one of those firms typically earns £48 300 a year against £41 600 at Ellerby, and completes more jobs a week. It also shows up in the work: at Ellerby about 4% of jobs need a return visit, and at the firms paying by the job it is nearer 11%.

Two engineers have left in the past two years and both went to firms paying by the job. Mick has no training budget, has never written an appraisal, and teaches the apprentice himself in the van between calls. Of the eight hours in an engineer's day, about six and a half are charged to a customer; the rest goes on travelling, stocking the van and paperwork.

Mick is sixty-one and wants the firm to work without him in it every day.

Source: Ellerby & Sons Plumbing Ltd

Appendix A: Ellerby & Sons Plumbing Ltd selected data, year to March 2025

Source: Ellerby & Sons Plumbing Ltd

Appendix C: Where an engineer's week goes, and how Ellerby trains people

Source: Analyst

Assess whether Ellerby & Sons Plumbing Ltd does enough to develop its engineers.

Calculate the capacity utilisation of an engineer's working week to support your answer.

Source A: Linneth Hotels Ltd

Linneth Hotels Ltd owns four hotels on the Northumberland coast. Between them they have 268 rooms and 160 employees, and in the year to October 2025 the company had revenue of £8.9 million and an operating profit of £0.62 million.

The business lives and dies by the seasons. In July and August the hotels are almost full. In January and February they are more than half empty, and the company cuts shifts to match. Most of its people are therefore taken on for the season rather than the year, and many of them do not come back.

Until last year the hotels were run by Gerald Linneth, who founded the company in 1998. His way of managing was simple: he made the decisions, he told people what to do, and he checked that it had been done. Rotas were posted on a Friday for the following week and arguing with them was not encouraged. He believed hospitality was too fast-moving for discussion.

In November 2025 he handed the running of the hotels to a new general manager, Priya Raman, who had previously managed a single large hotel in Edinburgh. She has started doing things differently. Housekeeping and kitchen teams now set their own rotas within rules the company agrees. Every hotel holds a short meeting at the start of each shift where any member of staff can raise a problem. She has promised that anyone who stays a full season will be offered training towards a recognised hospitality qualification.

Not everyone is convinced. Two of the four hotel managers have worked for Gerald Linneth for over twenty years and think the new approach is slow and soft. Gerald Linneth still owns the company and still visits every week.

Source: Linneth Hotels Ltd

Appendix A: Linneth Hotels Ltd selected data, year to October 2025

Source: Linneth Hotels Ltd

Appendix D: Two ways of keeping more staff at Linneth Hotels Ltd

Source: Analyst

Linneth Hotels Ltd is considering two ways of keeping more of its staff:

Option 1: a training programme with a guaranteed winter contract

Option 2: a pay rise of £1.10 an hour for all staff

Evaluate both options and recommend which one Linneth Hotels Ltd should choose.

Calculate the annual saving on replacement costs under Option 1 to support your answer.

Source A: Ashcombe Academy Trust

Ashcombe Academy Trust runs five secondary schools in the south west of England. It employs 480 people, of whom 285 are teachers, and teaches about 4 100 pupils. Its income last year was £31.4 million, almost all of it from government funding, and it finished the year with a surplus of £400 000.

Its problem is keeping teachers. Fifty-seven left last year. Most did not go to another school: they left teaching. When a class has no teacher the trust books a supply teacher through an agency, at a day rate that has risen every year, and supply teachers rarely mark work or know the pupils.

The chief executive, Dr Helena Marsh, cannot raise pay rates. Teachers' pay is set nationally and the trust has no power to change it. What she can change is everything else: how teachers are appraised, how much notice they get of a timetable change, whether they have time in the school day to plan and mark, and how decisions are taken in each school.

At present every teacher is appraised once a year against three targets, two of which are pupil examination results. Heads of department set the targets in September and review them the following July. Teachers say the appraisal is about proving they are doing their job rather than helping them do it better, and that the parts of the job they find hardest, such as behaviour and workload, are not what they are measured on.

Dr Marsh has two proposals in front of her. Neither of them changes teachers' pay rates, because those are not hers to change.

Source: Ashcombe Academy Trust

Appendix A: Ashcombe Academy Trust selected data

Source: Ashcombe Academy Trust

Appendix D: Two ways of keeping more teachers at Ashcombe

• 285 teachers, 39 teaching weeks a year, cover costs £24 an hour

Source: Analyst

Ashcombe Academy Trust is considering two ways of keeping more of its teachers:

Option 1: two hours a week of protected planning time for every teacher

Option 2: a £1 800 retention payment for teachers who stay beyond three years, funded from the trust's own budget

Evaluate both options and recommend which one Ashcombe Academy Trust should choose.

Calculate Ashcombe Academy Trust's employee turnover for its teachers to support your answer.

Source A: Richer Sounds

Richer Sounds sells hi-fi, televisions and home cinema equipment from 51 stores and a website. It has always been unusual in how it treats the people who work in it, and in 2019 it did something almost no company of its size has done.

On 10 May 2019 the founder, Julian Richer, transferred 60% of his shares, worth £9.2 million, into an Employee Ownership Trust. The colleagues now own the majority of the business they work in. He also paid every colleague other than the directors a thank-you bonus of £1 000 for every year they had worked there. The average length of service was eight years, and the bill came to about £4 million.

He stepped back from running it. The day-to-day business was left with the existing management board, and a colleagues' advisory council was set up, chaired by a trustee, to put colleagues' views in front of the people making decisions.

The rest of the Richer approach has been in place for far longer. Colleagues get a share of the profit, free use of the company's holiday homes, interest-free loans and a hardship fund they can apply to. Almost nobody leaves. Most vacancies are filled from inside the business, and the shortest time any member of the management board has served is twenty-five years.

That last figure is the one the company is now asked about. A business where everybody stays and everybody is promoted from within has deep knowledge of how it does things, and very little experience of how anybody else does them.

Source: Richer Sounds and Co-operative News

Appendix B: Richer Sounds compared with specialist electrical retail

Source: Analyst

Appendix C: How Richer Sounds grows its own people

Source: Analyst

Appendix D: Two ways of developing colleagues further

500 colleagues

Source: Analyst

Richer Sounds is considering two ways of developing its colleagues further:

Option 1: a fully funded retail qualification for every colleague

Option 2: a coaching scheme run by store managers

Evaluate both options and recommend which one Richer Sounds should choose.

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