Human Resource Planning (AQA A Level Business): Exam Questions

Source A: Timpson Group

Timpson Group is one of the largest service retailers in the United Kingdom and Ireland. It repairs shoes, cuts keys, mends watches, cleans clothes and prints photographs, trading as Timpson, Max Spielmann, Snappy Snaps, Johnsons, The Watch Lab, Jeeves, Timpson Security and Barbershop. It has been a family business since 1865 and is now run by the sixth generation of Timpsons.

In the 52 weeks to 27 September 2025 sales rose 5.6% to £367 million, from £347 million, the fourth year in a row of record sales. Key cutting alone took £101 million. Watch repair now brings in more than twice as much as shoe repair, the service the company was built on.

The way Timpson Group is run is unusual, and it is deliberate. The company picks colleagues for their personality and then trusts them to do the job their way. It calls this Upside Down Management. John Timpson puts it like this: "The best way to run a business is to trust your colleagues with the freedom to do their job in the way they know best." Colleagues in the shops make decisions that in most retailers would be taken at head office.

Where those colleagues come from is unusual too. After visiting a prison in 2002 and hiring a young man named Matt, Timpson Group has become one of the largest employers of ex-offenders in the United Kingdom. Over 12% of its 4 500+ colleagues have a past criminal conviction. The Timpson Foundation spends over £1 million a year supporting the employment of people from prison, and runs training academies inside prisons so that prisoners learn the shop services before they are released. Some colleagues work on day release while still serving a sentence. The Foundation also recruits care leavers and people leaving the armed forces.

The company says the approach works on its own terms: 75% of the ex-offenders it recruits stay with the business long term, and it describes them as loyal, hardworking colleagues.

Source: Timpson Group, 2026; The Times, 23 September 2026

Appendix A: Timpson Group selected data

Source: Timpson Group and The Times

Appendix D: Timpson Group colleague movements, year to 27 September 2025

Source: Analyst

Assess whether Timpson Group's human resource planning is working well.

Calculate Timpson Group's employee turnover rate for the year to 27 September 2025 to support your answer.

Source A: Compass Group

Compass Group is the largest contract catering business in the world. It does not own restaurants. Instead it is hired by other organisations (offices, hospitals, schools, universities, factories, prisons, sports grounds and oil platforms) to run their canteens and cafés for them. If it loses a contract, the client usually keeps the kitchen and hires someone else to work in it.

It is enormous. In the year to September 2025 it had revenue of $46.1 billion, up 9.7%, and it employed over 590 000 people. Organic revenue grew 8.7%, made up of 4.5% from winning new business, about 3% from higher prices and about 1% from selling more. Underlying operating profit grew 11.7% and underlying free cash flow reached $1 975 million, up 13.5%. Net new business growth stayed inside its 4% to 5% target range for the fourth year running.

Almost all of those 590 000 people are frontline: chefs, kitchen porters, counter staff and cleaners, working in someone else's building for a wage close to the legal minimum. Many are on contracts with variable hours, because a university canteen needs very different numbers in October and in July, and because a contract can end at three months' notice.

That flexibility has a price. People leave often, and every leaver has to be recruited, checked, trained in food safety and brought up to speed on a client's site. Clients notice when the faces change: the people serving lunch are the only part of Compass Group that most of its clients' employees ever see.

The business is also unusual in how it is run. A unit manager in a single hospital canteen makes decisions that in most companies of this size would go to head office, because nobody at head office knows that hospital.

Source: Compass Group annual results for the year to September 2025

Appendix B: Compass Group's workforce in the UK and Ireland

Source: Analyst

Appendix C: Where decisions are taken at Compass Group

Source: Analyst

Assess the impact of Compass Group's high employee turnover on its ability to win and keep contracts.

Source A: Castlebrook Veterinary Group

Castlebrook Veterinary Group runs seven veterinary practices across the Midlands. It employs 95 people, of whom 30 are qualified vets, and in the year to September 2025 it had revenue of £9.4 million and an operating profit of £710 000.

It did not grow by opening practices. It grew by buying them. Four of the seven were independent practices bought in the last five years, each with its own name over the door, its own way of booking appointments and its own long-standing clients. Castlebrook kept the names.

The problem is vets. There are not enough of them in the United Kingdom, and small animal practices compete for the same small pool. Six of Castlebrook's thirty vet posts are unfilled. When a practice cannot cover a day it books a locum, a self-employed vet who works for a day rate, and that day rate has risen every year. A locum does not know the animals, cannot be booked for follow-up appointments, and will not take part in the out-of-hours rota.

How much each practice decides for itself is now under review. At present each practice manager sets their own prices, chooses their own suppliers and recruits their own staff. The group's clinical director, Marcus Oyelaran, argues that this is why the group pays four different prices for the same vaccine and why recruitment takes eleven weeks. The practice managers argue that their clients came to them, not to Castlebrook, and that a practice in a market town cannot charge what one in a city suburb charges.

Source: Castlebrook Veterinary Group

Appendix A: Castlebrook Veterinary Group selected data, year to September 2025

Source: Castlebrook Veterinary Group

Appendix B: How Castlebrook covers its vet rota

Source: Castlebrook Veterinary Group

Assess the impact of the shortage of vets on Castlebrook Veterinary Group's profit.

Calculate the share of Castlebrook Veterinary Group's vet posts that are unfilled to support your answer.

Source A: Northvale Logistics Ltd

Northvale Logistics Ltd moves chilled and ambient food between farms, packhouses and supermarket depots across the north of England. It runs 92 lorries from two yards near Wakefield, employs 175 people and had revenue of £18.4 million in the year to March 2025, with an operating profit of £742 000.

Its problem is people, not vehicles. Northvale has 23 driver vacancies it cannot fill. In a bad week eleven lorries stand in the yard because nobody is licensed to drive them, and the work is passed to a subcontractor at a rate that leaves Northvale with nothing. The average driver is 51 years old and well over a third are past 55, so the gap widens every year even when nobody resigns.

The structure has not kept up either. There are only three levels between the managing director and the cab: one operations director, six supervisors, and the drivers. Each supervisor therefore looks after a large team spread across a region, most of whom they see for a few minutes a day at a weighbridge. Two supervisors have asked for help and one has gone off sick.

Olu Adeyemi, the operations director, has told the board that Northvale must decide whether to train its own drivers or outbid everyone else for the ones who are already qualified. Either way, she has said, the company cannot go on running a fleet it has nobody to drive.

Source: Northvale Logistics Ltd

Appendix B: How Northvale's 132 drivers are spread across the six supervisors

Source: Northvale Logistics Ltd

Appendix C: Northvale's driver shortage, month by month

Source: Northvale Logistics Ltd

Assess how well Northvale Logistics Ltd has planned its workforce over the past year.

Source A: Ravensworth Security Ltd

Ravensworth Security Ltd supplies security officers to shopping centres, hospitals, building sites and events across the north east of England. It has 27 contracts running at any one time, employs 320 people and had revenue of £11.8 million in the year to March 2025, with an operating profit of £386 000.

Only 112 of those 320 people have a contract that guarantees them work. The other 208 are on zero-hours contracts, and the reason is written into the way the business wins and loses work. A contract can arrive needing 22 guards at four weeks' notice, or end needing none at six weeks' notice, and Ravensworth cannot carry people it has nothing to put them on.

This winter the two happened together. In January the shopping centre that is Ravensworth's largest customer gave notice, taking 46 guards' work away. In February the company won a hospital contract needing 38 guards, but it does not start for fourteen weeks and those guards need training Ravensworth's shopping-centre team does not have.

The staff notice all of this. One guard worked 168 hours in the busiest month last year and 42 in the quietest. Ninety-four people on zero-hours contracts left during the year, most of them to jobs that told them in advance how much they would earn.

Priya Raithatha, the managing director, has told the board that the flexibility that keeps Ravensworth solvent is also what makes it difficult to keep anybody, and that the board has to decide which of the two matters more.

Source: Ravensworth Security Ltd

Appendix B: How Ravensworth's 320 staff are employed

• Staff in total: 320

Source: Ravensworth Security Ltd

Appendix C: Ravensworth's contracts, and how it is organised

Source: Ravensworth Security Ltd

Assess how well Ravensworth Security Ltd has planned for the loss of its largest contract.

Source A: Beckworth Care Group

Beckworth Care Group runs six residential care homes in the north of England. It has 312 beds, 284 residents and 240 employees, and in the year to March 2025 it had revenue of £14.8 million and made an operating profit of £0.9 million.

Caring for residents is work that cannot be put off or stored up. Every shift has to be covered, and the law sets a minimum number of qualified staff for the number of residents in a home. Beckworth needs 8 400 hours of care each week across the six homes.

For three years it has struggled to fill those hours with its own staff. Pay in the sector is low, the work is demanding, and supermarkets and warehouses nearby recruit from the same towns. In the year to March 2025, 84 employees left. When Beckworth cannot fill a shift, it books an agency worker instead, at roughly twice the hourly cost of its own staff. Agency workers also do not know the residents, and families have begun to comment on the number of unfamiliar faces.

Beckworth's structure has grown up without much thought. Each of the six homes has a registered manager, two deputy managers, four senior carers and then the care staff, and above the home managers sit a regional manager, an operations director and the chief executive. The chief executive, Dana Okoye, believes there are too many layers between her and the people who actually care for residents, and that decisions which should take a day take three weeks.

She has asked for a plan that would remove the deputy manager layer and widen the span of control of each home manager, moving the money saved into higher pay for care staff.

Source: Beckworth Care Group

Appendix A: Beckworth Care Group selected data, year to March 2025

Source: Beckworth Care Group

Appendix B: How Beckworth Care Group fills its care hours

Source: Beckworth Care Group

Appendix D: Two ways of filling Beckworth Care Group's care hours

Care hours needed each year = 436 800

Source: Analyst

Beckworth Care Group is considering two ways of covering its care hours:

Option 1: raise pay to £18.60 an hour and recruit enough permanent staff to end the use of agency workers

Option 2: keep the present mix of permanent and agency staff

Evaluate both options and recommend which one Beckworth Care Group should choose.

Calculate the cost of each care hour under Option 2 to support your answer.

Source A: Compass Group

Compass Group is the largest contract catering business in the world. It does not own restaurants. Instead it is hired by other organisations (offices, hospitals, schools, universities, factories, prisons, sports grounds and oil platforms) to run their canteens and cafés for them. If it loses a contract, the client usually keeps the kitchen and hires someone else to work in it.

It is enormous. In the year to September 2025 it had revenue of $46.1 billion, up 9.7%, and it employed over 590 000 people. Organic revenue grew 8.7%, made up of 4.5% from winning new business, about 3% from higher prices and about 1% from selling more. Underlying operating profit grew 11.7% and underlying free cash flow reached $1 975 million, up 13.5%. Net new business growth stayed inside its 4% to 5% target range for the fourth year running.

Almost all of those 590 000 people are frontline: chefs, kitchen porters, counter staff and cleaners, working in someone else's building for a wage close to the legal minimum. Many are on contracts with variable hours, because a university canteen needs very different numbers in October and in July, and because a contract can end at three months' notice.

That flexibility has a price. People leave often, and every leaver has to be recruited, checked, trained in food safety and brought up to speed on a client's site. Clients notice when the faces change: the people serving lunch are the only part of Compass Group that most of its clients' employees ever see.

The business is also unusual in how it is run. A unit manager in a single hospital canteen makes decisions that in most companies of this size would go to head office, because nobody at head office knows that hospital.

Source: Compass Group annual results for the year to September 2025

Appendix B: Compass Group's workforce in the UK and Ireland

Source: Analyst

Appendix D: Two ways of reducing employee turnover in the UK and Ireland

Source: Analyst

Compass Group is considering two ways of reducing employee turnover in the UK and Ireland:

Option 1: guarantee minimum hours to everyone on a variable-hours contract

Option 2: pay a retention bonus after twelve months

Evaluate both options and recommend which one Compass Group should choose.

Calculate the annual cost of replacing the employees who leave to support your answer.

Source A: Ravensworth Security Ltd

Ravensworth Security Ltd supplies security officers to shopping centres, hospitals, building sites and events across the north east of England. It has 27 contracts running at any one time, employs 320 people and had revenue of £11.8 million in the year to March 2025, with an operating profit of £386 000.

Only 112 of those 320 people have a contract that guarantees them work. The other 208 are on zero-hours contracts, and the reason is written into the way the business wins and loses work. A contract can arrive needing 22 guards at four weeks' notice, or end needing none at six weeks' notice, and Ravensworth cannot carry people it has nothing to put them on.

This winter the two happened together. In January the shopping centre that is Ravensworth's largest customer gave notice, taking 46 guards' work away. In February the company won a hospital contract needing 38 guards, but it does not start for fourteen weeks and those guards need training Ravensworth's shopping-centre team does not have.

The staff notice all of this. One guard worked 168 hours in the busiest month last year and 42 in the quietest. Ninety-four people on zero-hours contracts left during the year, most of them to jobs that told them in advance how much they would earn.

Priya Raithatha, the managing director, has told the board that the flexibility that keeps Ravensworth solvent is also what makes it difficult to keep anybody, and that the board has to decide which of the two matters more.

Source: Ravensworth Security Ltd

Appendix B: How Ravensworth's 320 staff are employed

• Staff in total: 320

Source: Ravensworth Security Ltd

Appendix C: Ravensworth's contracts, and how it is organised

Source: Ravensworth Security Ltd

Appendix D: Two ways of holding on to the people Ravensworth needs

208 staff on zero-hours contracts, operating profit £386 000

Source: Analyst

Ravensworth Security Ltd is considering two ways of holding on to the people it needs:

Option 1: guarantee a minimum of 20 hours a week to everyone

Option 2: keep zero-hours contracts and pay a bonus to anyone who completes a year

Evaluate both options and recommend which one Ravensworth Security Ltd should choose.

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