A LevelBusinessAQAExam QuestionsManaging PeopleOrganisational Design

Organisational Design (AQA A Level Business): Exam Questions

Exam code: 7132

Syllabus Edition

First teaching 2026

First exams 2028

2 hours15 questions
Easy
Medium
Hard
1
6 marks

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 the 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, hard-working colleagues.

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

Appendix C: How Timpson Group is organised, compared with a conventional service retailer of similar size

Timpson Group versus a conventional service retailer: hierarchy levels 3 versus 6; head-office colleagues per 100 shop colleagues 4 versus 11; shops per area manager 22 versus 9; shop freedom high versus low; head-office approval few versus many.

Source: Analyst

Timpson Group calls its approach Upside Down Management.

Analyse one way in which trusting colleagues in the shops to make their own decisions might affect Timpson Group's levels of hierarchy.

How did you do?

2
6 marks

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 C: Beckworth Care Group's structure now and as proposed

Table comparing current and proposed structure: layers 5/4; deputy managers 12/0; senior carers 24/30; span of control 7/14; agency decisions regional/home manager; approval 3 weeks/3 days; saving £420,000; pay £17.20/£18.60 hourly.

Source: Beckworth Care Group

Analyse one way in which widening the span of control of each home manager might affect the quality of care at Beckworth Care Group.

How did you do?

3
6 marks

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 C: Where decisions are taken at Compass Group

Two tables. Where decisions are taken: what goes on the menu this week, which local supplier to buy fresh produce from, hiring a kitchen porter, and opening hours agreed with the client are taken by a unit manager, not at head office; prices charged to the client, national contracts with large food suppliers, food safety standards and pay rates are taken at head office, not by a unit manager. A table of figures: over 55 000 sites run worldwide; 11 employees on average in a UK unit; 6 layers between a kitchen porter and the chief executive.

Source: Analyst

Analyse one way in which letting unit managers decide the weekly menu might affect Compass Group's ability to keep its clients.

How did you do?

4
6 marks

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 C: What each practice decides, now and as proposed

Table comparing current and proposed decisions: managers set prices, suppliers and recruitment; proposed group control, local pricing, one booking system, one vaccine price, recruitment cut from 11 to 5 weeks, and £164,000 annual buying saving.

Source: Castlebrook Veterinary Group

Analyse one way in which taking buying decisions away from practice managers might affect Castlebrook Veterinary Group's costs.

How did you do?

5
6 marks

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

Bar chart of drivers per supervisor team: Team 1 has 18, Team 2 20, Team 3 21, Team 4 23, Team 5 24 and Team 6 26. The vertical axis ranges from 0 to 30 drivers.
Two tables. Drivers in each supervisor's team: Team 1, 18; Team 2, 20; Team 3, 21; Team 4, 23; Team 5, 24; Team 6, 26; 132 drivers in total. A table of measures: 3 levels between the managing director and a driver; 4 minutes a supervisor spends with each driver on an average day; 2 supervisors have asked for extra help; 1 supervisor currently off sick; no written job description for a supervisor.

Source: Northvale Logistics Ltd

Analyse one way in which Northvale Logistics Ltd having only three levels between the managing director and a driver might affect its costs.

How did you do?

6
6 marks

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

Two tables. Timeline of Ravensworth's contracts: May 2024, wins a building-site contract needing 22 guards at four weeks' notice; September 2024, loses an events contract and 31 guards stand down for the winter; January 2025, the shopping centre gives notice, taking 46 guards' work away in six weeks; February 2025, wins a hospital contract needing 38 guards, starting in fourteen weeks; March 2025, the board asks whether the workforce can be planned at all. A table of measures: 3 levels between the managing director and a guard; 4 area managers; 27 contracts running; largest contract 19% of revenue; cost of retraining one guard for hospital work £1 850; 8 weeks between the shopping centre contract ending and the hospital one starting.

Source: Ravensworth Security Ltd

Analyse one way in which losing a contract worth 19% of revenue might affect the way Ravensworth Security Ltd is organised.

How did you do?

7
6 marks

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 C: How Monzo is organised and where its people work

Table of how Monzo is organised and where its people work: 4 levels between the chief executive and a new engineer; about 180 squads; 8 people in a typical squad; about 2 600 employees in customer operations; 61% of employees work mainly from home; 3 offices; 72% of employees on London contracts; annual cost of a desk in London £9 400; annual cost of a desk outside London £5 100; 4 formal training days for each employee each year; 58% of manager roles filled from inside the company.

Source: Analyst

Analyse one way in which organising most of its work into squads of about eight people might affect how quickly Monzo can change a product.

How did you do?

1
9 marks

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

Table of selected data: 6 care homes; 312 beds; 284 residents; 91% occupancy; 240 employees; 84 departures; 8,400 care hours needed weekly; £14.8 million revenue; £0.9 million operating profit.

Source: Beckworth Care Group

Appendix B: How Beckworth Care Group fills its care hours

Stacked bar chart of weekly care hours, showing agency use rising: own staff 7,644, 7,308 and 6,888 hours; agency staff 756, 1,092 and 1,512 in 2022-23 to 2024-25. Axis: 0 to 9,000 hours.
Tables show weekly care hours and agency spending: 2022-23, own 7,644, agency 756 (9%, £1.1m); 2023-24, 7,308, 1,092 (13%, £1.7m); 2024-25, 6,888, 1,512 (18%, £2.5m).

Source: Beckworth Care Group

Appendix C: Beckworth Care Group's structure now and as proposed

Comparison table, now versus proposed: layers 5→4; deputy managers 12→0; senior carers 24→30; span of control 7→14; agency decisions regional manager→home manager; approval 3 weeks→3 days; managers’ saving £420,000; pay £17.20→£18.60 per hour.

Source: Beckworth Care Group

Assess whether removing the deputy manager layer is the right way for Beckworth Care Group to improve its financial performance.

How did you do?

2
9 marks

Source A: BT Group

BT Group is the United Kingdom's largest telecommunications company. It builds and runs the networks that carry broadband and mobile calls, and it sells services to households, businesses and government.

In May 2023 it announced one of the largest planned workforce reductions in British corporate history. By the end of the 2030 financial year it intends to remove between 40 000 and 55 000 roles, taking its global headcount from about 130 000, a figure that includes third-party contractors, down to between 75 000 and 90 000. That is a reduction of between 31% and 42%. The company set itself a target of £3 billion of annual cost savings.

The reasoning is that the work itself is changing. BT Group has spent years digging up roads to lay fibre broadband and building its 5G mobile network. Once that build is finished the business needs far fewer people to do it. At the same time the old copper telephone network and the 3G mobile network are being switched off, so the engineers who maintain them are no longer needed. Artificial intelligence is taking over more of the call handling and network fault diagnosis that used to be done by people, and the chief executive, Allison Kirkby, has said that advances in artificial intelligence will probably deepen the cuts rather than soften them.

The plan is not simply about having fewer people. BT Group needs many more people who can write software, work with data and build artificial intelligence systems, and far fewer who can splice a copper cable. Those are not the same people, and the company cannot buy all the new skills it needs on the open market.

Its structure is also under review. Decisions that affect customers currently pass through several layers of management, and the company has said it wants to be simpler and faster.

Source: BT Group announcements, 2023 to 2026

Appendix C: BT Group's structure now and as proposed

Table comparing BT Group now and proposed: layers 8/5; customer-facing divisions 4/2; span of control 6/11; service-plan decisions at divisional head office/the team handling the call; approval 11/3 weeks; managers 14,600/8,900; proposed pay saving £412m.

Source: Analyst

Assess whether reducing the number of layers of management is the best way for BT Group to speed up its decision making.

How did you do?

3
9 marks

Source A: Pret A Manger

Pret A Manger sells sandwiches, salads and coffee, made fresh in the shop each morning and thrown away or given to charity at the end of the day. It has grown past 750 shops in 21 countries, of which more than 500 are in the United Kingdom, and employs about 12 500 team members.

In 2025 system sales rose 2.7% to £1.2 billion and the business made an operating profit of £37 million. In the first four months of 2026 sales rose 7% worldwide and 8% in the United Kingdom, helped by opening shops in railway stations, airports and, for the first time, a drive-through in Warrington.

The company says its growth comes from investing in training its teams so that service is faster. It runs what it calls the Pret Academy, and more than 85% of its managers started as team members on the shop floor.

That matters more at Pret than at most retailers, because the job is unusually demanding. Everything is made on site before the shop opens, the lunchtime rush is ferocious and brief, and a queue that moves slowly loses customers who have forty minutes and somewhere else to go. A new team member who has not been trained properly slows the queue down.

Shops are run by a shop manager who reports to an area manager. How much a shop manager may decide for themselves, and how many shops an area manager can realistically look after as the estate grows past 750, is now under discussion.

Source: Pret A Manger announcements, 2025 and 2026

Appendix C: What a Pret shop manager decides

Two tables. Who takes each decision, the shop manager or someone above the shop: how many of each item to make that morning, the shop manager; who works which shift, the shop manager; hiring a team member, the shop manager; giving a customer a free coffee to settle a complaint, the shop manager; prices, above the shop; what is on the menu, above the shop; which charity gets the unsold food, above the shop; opening hours, above the shop. A table of measures: 12 shops an area manager looks after; 5 layers between a team member and the chief executive.

Source: Analyst

Appendix D: Two ways of structuring Pret as it passes 750 shops

Comparison table of Option 1, giving shop managers more decisions, and Option 2, adding a regional layer: shops per area manager 12/8; new posts 0/24; annual cost £0.45m/£2.25m; cost per shop £600/not provided; approvals 6/14; approval time 2/9 days; turnover fall 6/2 percentage points; drift risk higher/lower.

Source: Analyst

Assess whether Pret A Manger should give its shop managers more decisions to make.

How did you do?

4
9 marks

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 A: Ravensworth Security Ltd selected data, year to March 2025

Selected-data table: staff 320; zero-hours staff 208; zero-hours share 65%; full-time permanent 74; part-time permanent 38; contracts 27; revenue £11.8m; operating profit £386 000; hospital guards 38; shopping-centre work ending 46.

Source: Ravensworth Security Ltd

Appendix B: How Ravensworth's 320 staff are employed

Pie chart showing Ravensworth’s staff by contract type: zero-hours 65%, full-time permanent 23%, and part-time permanent 12%.
Table of workforce measures: a zero-hours guard worked 168 hours in the busiest month and 42 in the quietest; 61% want guaranteed hours, 29% prefer flexibility; 94 left and 208 can move within a week.

Source: Ravensworth Security Ltd

Assess whether zero-hours contracts are the right way for Ravensworth Security Ltd to organise its workforce.

Calculate the employee turnover of Ravensworth Security Ltd's zero-hours staff to support your answer.

How did you do?

5
9 marks

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

Table of Ellerby & Sons’ selected data for 2025: 7 people (5 qualified engineers including owner, 1 apprentice, 1 office staff); revenue £685,000; operating profit £78,000; 140 jobs weekly; 72% repeat customers; 2 leavers in two years; trading 22 years.

Source: Ellerby & Sons Plumbing Ltd

Assess whether Ellerby & Sons Plumbing Ltd needs to change the way it is organised if it is to run without its owner in it every day.

How did you do?

1
15 marks

Source A: BT Group

BT Group is the United Kingdom's largest telecommunications company. It builds and runs the networks that carry broadband and mobile calls, and it sells services to households, businesses and government.

In May 2023 it announced one of the largest planned workforce reductions in British corporate history. By the end of the 2030 financial year it intends to remove between 40 000 and 55 000 roles, taking its global headcount from about 130 000, a figure that includes third-party contractors, down to between 75 000 and 90 000. That is a reduction of between 31% and 42%. The company set itself a target of £3 billion of annual cost savings.

The reasoning is that the work itself is changing. BT Group has spent years digging up roads to lay fibre broadband and building its 5G mobile network. Once that build is finished the business needs far fewer people to do it. At the same time the old copper telephone network and the 3G mobile network are being switched off, so the engineers who maintain them are no longer needed. Artificial intelligence is taking over more of the call handling and network fault diagnosis that used to be done by people, and the chief executive, Allison Kirkby, has said that advances in artificial intelligence will probably deepen the cuts rather than soften them.

The plan is not simply about having fewer people. BT Group needs many more people who can write software, work with data and build artificial intelligence systems, and far fewer who can splice a copper cable. Those are not the same people, and the company cannot buy all the new skills it needs on the open market.

Its structure is also under review. Decisions that affect customers currently pass through several layers of management, and the company has said it wants to be simpler and faster.

Source: BT Group announcements, 2023 to 2026

Appendix B: BT Group employees by type of work

Grouped bar chart of BT Group employees now and planned for 2030: network build 34 000 now, 11 000 planned; copper 21 000 now, 3 000 planned; customer service 29 000 now, 14 000 planned; engineering 18 000 now, 16 000 planned; software and AI 9 000 now, 18 000 planned; head office 19 000 now, 13 000 planned. The vertical axis shows employees from 0 to 36 000.
Table comparing BT Group employees now with planned 2030 numbers: network build 34 000 to 11 000; copper 21 000 to 3 000; customer service 29 000 to 14 000; engineering 18 000 to 16 000; software, data and AI 9 000 to 18 000; sales and support 19 000 to 13 000. Totals: 130 000 to 75 000.

Source: Analyst

Appendix C: BT Group's structure now and as proposed

Table comparing BT Group’s current and proposed structure: layers 8 to 5; customer-facing divisions 4 to 2; manager span 6 to 11; decisions move from head office to call-handling teams; approval 11 to 3 weeks; managers 14 600 to 8 900; £412m annual pay saving.

Source: Analyst

Evaluate two ways in which BT Group could change its organisational structure to support its 2030 plan and recommend which one it should choose.

How did you do?

2
15 marks

Source A: Pret A Manger

Pret A Manger sells sandwiches, salads and coffee, made fresh in the shop each morning and thrown away or given to charity at the end of the day. It has grown past 750 shops in 21 countries, of which more than 500 are in the United Kingdom, and employs about 12 500 team members.

In 2025 system sales rose 2.7% to £1.2 billion and the business made an operating profit of £37 million. In the first four months of 2026 sales rose 7% worldwide and 8% in the United Kingdom, helped by opening shops in railway stations, airports and, for the first time, a drive-through in Warrington.

The company says its growth comes from investing in training its teams so that service is faster. It runs what it calls the Pret Academy, and more than 85% of its managers started as team members on the shop floor.

That matters more at Pret than at most retailers, because the job is unusually demanding. Everything is made on site before the shop opens, the lunchtime rush is ferocious and brief, and a queue that moves slowly loses customers who have forty minutes and somewhere else to go. A new team member who has not been trained properly slows the queue down.

Shops are run by a shop manager who reports to an area manager. How much a shop manager may decide for themselves, and how many shops an area manager can realistically look after as the estate grows past 750, is now under discussion.

Source: Pret A Manger announcements, 2025 and 2026

Appendix A: Selected data for Pret A Manger

Table of Pret A Manger data: over 750 shops worldwide in 21 countries, over 500 in the UK, about 12 500 team members; 2025 sales £1.2bn, growth 2.7%, profit £37m; 2026 growth 7% worldwide, 8% UK; shops grew 5%.

Source: Pret A Manger

Appendix C: What a Pret shop manager decides

Two tables. Who takes each decision, the shop manager or someone above the shop: how many of each item to make that morning, the shop manager; who works which shift, the shop manager; hiring a team member, the shop manager; giving a customer a free coffee to settle a complaint, the shop manager; prices, above the shop; what is on the menu, above the shop; which charity gets the unsold food, above the shop; opening hours, above the shop. A table of measures: 12 shops an area manager looks after; 5 layers between a team member and the chief executive.

Source: Analyst

Appendix D: Two ways of structuring Pret as it passes 750 shops

Comparison table for Option 1 (more shop-manager decisions) and Option 2 (regional layer): shops per area manager 12/8; new posts 0/24; annual cost £0.45m/£2.25m; cost per shop £600/not provided; approvals 6/14; approval time 2/9 days; turnover fall 6/2 percentage points; drift risk higher/lower.

Source: Analyst

Pret A Manger is considering two ways of structuring itself as it passes 750 shops:

Option 1: give shop managers more decisions to make

Option 2: add a regional layer between shops and head office

Evaluate both options and recommend which one Pret A Manger should choose.

Calculate the cost for each shop under Option 2 to support your answer.

How did you do?

3
15 marks

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 B: What each engineer does in a week, and what they are paid

Bar chart of jobs completed weekly by five engineers, increasing from 24 for Engineer 1 to 32 for Engineer 5. The vertical axis shows jobs from 0 to 40.
Table of 140 jobs: hourly pay; annual earnings £41,600 at Ellerby and £48,300 at local job-rate firms; return visits 4% and 11%; 2 of 5 prefer job pay, 3 of 5 do not.

Source: Analyst

Appendix D: Two ways of paying and organising the engineers

An engineer works 46 weeks a year. Operating profit is £78 000.

Comparison table: Option 1 pays £35 per job for 30 weekly jobs, earning £48 300; Option 2 keeps £41,600 hourly pay for 28 jobs. Annual costs are £33,500 versus £44,000, profit used 43% versus 56%, and return visits 9% versus 4%.

Source: Analyst

Ellerby & Sons Plumbing Ltd is considering two ways of paying and organising its engineers:

Option 1: pay by the job at £35 a job

Option 2: keep the hourly rate and add a supervisor

Evaluate both options and recommend which one Ellerby & Sons Plumbing Ltd should choose.

Calculate employee productivity for Ellerby & Sons Plumbing Ltd's engineers under Option 1 to support your answer.

How did you do?