Different departments or functional areas within a business.

Usually seen as part of the organisational structure. There are two main types of structure:

  • Hierarchy
  • Flat

Where you lie in the structure can determine the:

►Levels and responsibility

►Levels and pay

►Communication

  • Upward/downward
  • Slow in hierarchy
  • Type of communication flowing up and down

HUMAN RESOURCES (aka Personnel)

  • Recruitment:
  • Job description/person specification
  • Job adverts
  • Applications/CVs
  • Interviews
  • Retention
  • Pay and conditions
  • Disciplinary Action
  • Verbal warnings
  • Written warnings
  • dismissal
  • Training, development and promotion
  • Internal/external training
  • Internal promotion
  • Trade union negotiations

Legislation

Equal Pay Act 1970

The Sex Discrimination Act 1975 & 1986

The Race Relations Act 1976

The Disability Discrimination Act 1995

Health and Safety at Work Act 1974

The Employment Rights Act 1996 - legal rights of employees and covers the contract of employment, payslips, Sunday working, time off work, suspension, maternity rights, employment termination, unfair dismissal and redundancy.

FINANCE

The finance department is involved with all other departments

Financial accounting

  • Recording all transactions (via financial documents)
  • Keeping records of all the accounts
  • Preparing financial reports

Costs and Budgets

  • Work out all the costs of products/services
  • Analysing past costs
  • Setting targets and department budgets
  • Comparing budgets to actual
Managing Finance
  • What resources are needed
  • Raising additional capital for new resources

Payroll

  • Recording employee hours worked
  • Calculating pay and deductions
  • Calculating benefits

Administration

The administration department provides services such as:

  • Clerical, filing and records
  • Photocopying
  • Secretarial services
  • Reception/telephone
  • Incoming and outgoing Mail

Provides services to whole business & all functional areas

Operations

  • Gaining raw materials
  • Turning raw materials into products
  • Adding value – packaging; purpose
  • Types of production
  • Job – one off product i.e. painting
  • Batch – make a load of one item before moving on to a different one i.e. bread
  • Continuous flow – goes through different processes until product is finished (production line – car)
  • Research and Development
  • Quality Issues
  • Quality control/inspection
  • Quality assurance

ICT support

  • In house support
  • Websites

Customer Service

  • Information of product/service ranges
  • Delivery information
  • Product safety
  • Product/service advice and information
  • Information on credit facilities

After sales service – guarantees, help lines

MARKETING AND SALES

“getting the right product to the right people at the

right place at the right time”

Customers: person who buys a product or service

Consumers: person who uses a product of service

  • Marketing/Promoting: target groups:
  • Age
  • Gender
  • Income
  • Lifestyle
  • Geographical area
  • Market Research
  • Primary
  • First hand information
  • Questionnaires / interviews
  • Loyalty cards
  • Secondary
  • Reference books
  • Statistics
  • Reports

4 P’s of Marketing:

►Product

  • Meeting customer want and needs
  • Product research

►Price

  • Price customers are willing to pay
  • Competitors prices

►Promotion

  • Advertising
  • Branding
  • Packaging
  • Publicity
  • Special promotions (competitions)

►Place

  • Local, national, international
  • Where to sell:
  • Shops
  • Internet
  • Catalogues
  • Direct mail
  • Telesales

DEPARTMENTS/SWJ