Balfour Beatty's Management Structure, 4Ps, and HR Functions

This report provides an overview of Balfour Beatty, a multinational infrastructure group, focusing on its management structure, marketing mix, and HR functions. It details the company's background, vision, mission, and values, along with its various operations such as construction, assistance services, and infrastructure investment. The report examines Balfour Beatty's divisional management structure, highlighting its advantages and disadvantages, including accountability, economies of scale, teamwork, competition, and communication. Furthermore, it explains the 4Ps of the marketing mix (Product, Price, Place, Promotion) in relation to Balfour Beatty's offerings and discusses the critical functions of HR, such as recruitment, employee relations, and talent development. The analysis aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of how Balfour Beatty manages its resources and operations to achieve its business goals.

Introduction to
Management

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................1
Background of the Balfour Beatty..........................................................................................1
Management structure of the Balfour Beatty.........................................................................3
Advantages and disadvantages of management structure......................................................4
4Ps of marketing mix in relation to the Balfour Beatty..........................................................5
Explanation of the function of the HR...................................................................................6
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................8
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................9

INTRODUCTION
Management is the process of cooperation and administration of the tasks or duties and
resources which can be done through effective planning, organising, leading, decision making,
controlling and many more. Management helps in accomplishing the goals of the business
organisation in an effective manner. The main objective of the management is to generate
revenue or profit for the growth and survival of an organisation. It plays a significant role in
achieving the group goals through effective direction to all individuals(Purohit, Paul, and
Mishra, 2021). It helps in enhancing the efficiency and productivity which assists the business in
reducing the cost. Management provide assistance to the personnel to adjust with the changing
environment in order to gain the competitive advantage. Effective management enables an
organisation to coordinate with all individuals which assist in achieving the personal objective.
The manager of an organisation have to perform the various functions which includes the setting
objective to get the goals of the business. It divides the main goals into small achievable tasks
and make them accountable for the tasks assigned. It also develop the team and motivates the
members to build up their confidence level and encourage them toward the goal of the business.
In this report, Balfour Beatty has been taken into consideration which is a multinational
infrastructure group based company. The report will cover the background of a business concern
and the operations in which it is involved(Triprasetia, 2019). Further, it will elaborate the
management structure of a business concern which include the advantages and disadvantages. In
addition to this, it will discuss the concept of marketing mix in respect to the organisation.
Moreover, it will provide overview of the functions of a HR such as recruitment and selection,
employee relations and talent development.
MAIN BODY
Background of the Balfour Beatty
Balfour Beatty is a multinational business enterprise of construction which was
constituted in the year 1909 by two person George Balfour and Andrew Beatty who was an
engineer and an accountant. The company involves in a business of creating structure from raw
material, occupational group services, assistance services and so on. The company has more
than 24500 employees who are very innovative that support the economic growth of an
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organisation(Schermerhorn Bachrach, and Wright,2020). An organisation has part time, full
time staff and the part time staff as well to all the business location.
Vision: The vision of the Balfour Beatty is to build new future with its new launched strategy of
sustainability in which it aimed to reduce the emission and waste that occur during the
construction of the infrastructure so that it can reduce the negative impact on the environment.
The strategy mainly focus on the key areas which include environment, material and the
communities.
Mission: The mission of the company is to deliver quality services to the communities so as to
create the exceptional living experiences for them. It provides values to the needs of the
community to provide them comfort and treat fairly. It improves the relationship with them and
develop innovative infrastructure for them
Values: Balfour Beatty values includes the following: Integrity: They always do the right job in order to provide their fair services to the
community and provide the services which are promise.
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Il
lustration 1: balfour beatty
SOURCE: https://www.constructionweekonline.com/tags/balfour-beatty

 Teamwork: They believe in teamwork so that they can provide their better services by
sharing knowledge with each other in group. Excellence: They always strive to improve their performance with safety and quality and
do not consider the underperformance work.
 Respect: The company respect all the communities, embrace their different culture and
treat equally.
Operations: Balfour Beatty includes the operations such as designing, building and maintaining
the infrastructure with services: Construction services: The construction services of Balfour Beatty contains designing,
management of construction, renovation, mechanical and electrical services and the
services related to the construction, land and rail engineering. Assistance services: An organisation also involves in reinforcement services which
includes the installation of water, gas and electricity network, their up gradation and
repair. It provide services of renewal of rails, management of the street and public space,
its operations and maintenance.
 Infrastructure investment: Th company have a big long-term portfolio of infrastructure
investment in United Kingdom or US which involves schools, health, road or street
sectors. It has also interest in the military accommodation in US.
Management structure of the Balfour Beatty
The structure of the management refers to the organisation of the management in
hierarchical form where the roles and responsibilities are divided at different level (Griffin,
2021). The hierarchy ascertains the line of authority, connection, rights and obligation of a
business concern. It provides deep understanding to the individual which person has to perform
what task so that the goals of an organisation can be achieved easily. The main aim of the
management structure is to bring members together and demarcates functions among them.
There are different types of organisational structure some of which are depicted as under:
 Hierarchical structure: This is also known as line organisation where the chain of
command is one. The employees are grouped together by assigning their roles or
functions and the decision-making process flows from top to down. The structure mainly
described in the pyramid form where multiple level of authorities are there that are
divided in line authority. In this hierarchy, there is chief executive at the top level that is
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followed by the senior management, middle managers and lastly the employees. As there
are various authorities at top level so the directions are given to the employees from top
management to the lower management.
 Functional structure: This is the centralised structure where organization is divided into
various groups such as finance, marketing, HR, IT etc. by their roles and responsibilities.
Each department has its own senior authority or head who is responsible to provide report
to the top management(Rawal and et.al., 2021). It is different types of hierarchy where
business are operated under the functional structure in which groups are made according
to the specialisation of am individuals.
 Divisional structure: This structure is mainly used by the large organisation which are
operated in the wide geographical areas. In this type of structure, organisations are
segregated into various department on the basis of the products, services where each
division has the executive leader and the necessary resources that are required to support
the product line. This can be useful for the company when it has many regions, market or
the products.
Balfour Beatty has adopted divisional structure for the organisation where the authorities
are divided according to the services provided by an organisation. It has assigned the
responsibility to the leader of each department and make them accountable for the business
activities that are operated by the employees of each division. Each department of an
organisation is handled separately where employees are organised according to their specific
skills.
Advantages and disadvantages of management structure
As Balfour Beatty is a big construction company and have various operations and services
so it follows the divisional structure for their organisation where its resources and activities are
separated with their division. The following are the advantages and disadvantages of the
divisional structure which ate under:
Advantages Disadvantages
 Accountability: The divisional
structure of an organisation is
responsible for the their own division
 Competition: When an organisation
has healthy competition so it provides
effective outcome to the entire
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because they are accountable for the
assigned responsibility by the top level
authority(Onibokun, 2019). It can help
in analysing the department which bear
losses and which making profits so that
the department which is in loss can be
compete shut down and support to the
division which makes profits. In
relation to the Balfour Betty, it has
various segments such as building,
engineering and rail so it makes the
section responsible for their duties and
response to the head of the authority.
 Team working: This structure helps
the people in an organisation to interact
with each other in their section. They
all have same goal in a particular
section and work towards the success of
an organisation and also provide them
motivation to be more productive. Each
department has its own working so the
team work together and allow them to
communicate so that they can get to
know about the need of a person to help
them. In relation to the Balfour Betty, it
allows effective communication in each
section so that the people can share
their ideas to make effective decision.
 Organisational culture: Every
origination has its own values and
principles and the Balfour Betty also
organisation but when the completion
become severe so it negatively impact
the organisation(Jiaqiang and et.al.,
2018). The performance of the
organisation may get reduced instead of
getting enhanced. In relation to the
Balfour Betty, the company does not
allow such type of competition in order
to save their position in the market.
 Economies of scale: when an
organisation produces goods in large
quantity so they have good economies
of scale which provide benefits to the
company. As regard with the Balfour
Betty, it takes the advantage of
economies of scale as it is a big
company which operates many
functions.
 Lack of communication among the
division: When the division would not
communicate with each other so it can
impact the firm negatively and not
allow to get the goals of the business.
They cannot share their effective ides
with each other in order to improve the
performance of the business. This
might harm the company in form of
extra taxes, fines, lack of finance to
mitigate the risk and so on. In relation
to the Balfour Betty, the company have
effective coordination among all the
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has its own values and practices. Each
division carry different type of culture
and help the people to interact with
each other whim create bond between
them. A better organisation culture help
the employees in understanding each
other and assist them in getting the
goals of the business.
departments which hep in getting the
real outcomes.
4Ps of marketing mix in relation to the Balfour Beatty
Marketing mix 4p (Product, Price, Place, Promotion) it referred to the imperative
elements of the company's operational framework. Marketing mix is an analysis framework tool
that defines the company's operation strategy and measuring an existing business. It is helpful for
organisation to focusing on different segments of the organisation and allure consumer to buy its
product(Lu and et.al., 2020) . The marketing mix generally use for understanding the consumer's
need, finding the cause of unsuccessful of their current product, understanding how current
product and service and pricing strategy interact with the consumers. In context to Balfour
Beatty, The Marketing mix 4p is assess the Balfour Beatty for evaluate the current operational
strategy so that company can easily achieve the organisation' s goal. It is useful for the company
when they want make innovative strategy in competitive market and create a better
understanding with consumer's desire.
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Product: The product is a good and service that fullfill the consumer' desire and need. In
growing market, consumers have varieties of product to buy in anywhere in world .With relation
to Balfour Beatty, The company generally dealing in Electrical swichgear, modular substations,
SCADA protection, fiber cabling solutions, system commisioning and LV and HV cabling in
multiple countries such as the UK, US and Hongkong etc . The Balfour beatty is foremost
specialisation in rail infrastructure contractor, components and maintence services, track system,
specialist plant, electrification and serving multi-disciplinary product etc
Price: The company charge amount against with its product and service is called price.
The price of a commodity is directly link with sales volume and profitability. The company uses
different type of strategies for determining the price of product and keep in mind that price of
product is not more than from competitive company's product. With references to Balfour Beatty,
The company is using competitive pricing strategy in this strategy, The company have tried to
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Illustration 2: 4Ps of marketing Mix
SOURCE: https://byjus.com/commerce/marketing-mix/

select price value of its good or service is based on its competitive market. The Balfour Beatty
is providing better experience and service to their consumers at nominal price that can help to
bring more value to customers and soaring the willingness-to- pay.
Promotion: The promotion includes decisions that directly related to budgeting,
advertisement, public relationship, direct marketing, sales-force and advertisement etc. In
promotion segment, the company mainly focus on awareness about their product and service. In
relation to Balfour Beatty, The company has been using extensive advertisement on TV, website
and newspaper(Qin and et.al., 2020). The given company mainly use social media for
advertisement and promotional activities that can be easy for consumer to know about product
and service.
Place: The Place is defined as where the product and service are ready to available for
trade. The main motive of this element to ensure the ready product and service is available for
consumers at approachable place and time. In context to Balfour Beatty, The organisation is
using approachable place that can be helpful for consumer to buy the product and service. The
respective company also available on internet as it is easy for consumer to buy a product at any
time and any place.
Explanation of the function of the HR
Human resource is a division in an organisation that have to perform various
responsibilities such as managing the life cycle of employees which includes the recruitment,
hiring, on boarding, training and firing and manage other benefits and applicable laws.
Therefore, an HR department of an organisation have to perform various roles such as hiring,
training and development, retention, performance evaluation, compensation and benefits. It also
implement all the rules, regulation and policies of an organisation in order to provide safety and
healthy workplace to the employees. There are various functions of HR so me of which are
described in context to the Balfour Beatty which are as under:
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Recruitment and selection
Recruitment: It is the process of searching for the candidate for the required position which
involves identification, attracting, interviewing, selecting, hiring and on boarding of the
employees. It assists the HR department in faster hiring of a candidates that are of high quality
and knowledgeable. The department is consisted of experienced and knowledgable staff to
recruit the skilled individual. In context to Balfour Beatty, recruitment help the HR division to
find out the qualified candidates from the large talent pool(Papageorgiou, 2018. They are
specialised in recruiting the people as they have profound understanding job market and provide
their valuable advice in order to search for the best candidates.
 Selection: It is the process of choosing the right or capable candidates to fill the vacant
position in an organisation. It involves the series of steps which assist an organisation to
get the qualifies, suitable and skilled candidates for the specific job. Selection is the
negative action of an organisation because it contains rejections or elimination of the less
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Illustration 3: Function of HR
SOURCE: https://www.aihr.com/blog/human-resource-basics/

skilled candidates and choose the most suitable one. With reference to Balfour Beatty, it
select the qualifies candidate by conducting the various test of interviews so that they get
the best talent for their organisation. It assists in matching the skills of the potential
employee with the vacant position so as to acquire proficient individual and eliminates
unable candidates.
Employee retention
It is a process which is followed to encourage the talented employees to remain engaged
in an organisation. A business concern need to keep their best employees in an organisation so
they bring various strategies in order to mitigate the risk of employee turnover. It helps a concern
in enhanced the experience of the employees, increase their productivity to provide the better
experience to the customers. Balfour Beatty retain its employees because it help the company in
reducing cost of training and assist in increasing the productivity. Therefore, they provide
various benefits to the employee so that they can maintain their work life balance.
Talent development
It refers to the process designed by an organisation to uncover the hidden talent of the
high potential candidates in order to create the high performance workforce. It assists the an
organisation in reducing the gap between the needs of a concern and the skills of employees)
(Lengnick-Hall and et.al., 2018). Thus, the company improve the skills of the employee and
retain the most talented candidates. As regard with Balfour Beatty, the company provide its
workforce learning program in the form of training so that they can be able to improve their
skills and enhance their knowledge as well.
CONCLUSION
From the above discussion it has been concluded that management has important role in
an organisation because it helps in organising and provide validity to the organisation and
provide controls on the activities of the business to reach out the goals. It help in increasing the
productivity of the employees as it helps in enhancing the skill of the employees. An efficient
management provides direction for the fulfilling the objectives of an organisation by arranging
the resources and encourage the team members to work towards the goal of the business. The
responsible authority in management enable the employees to improve their skills and
knowledge so that they can give tier better performance. It allows the employees to share their
creative or innovative ideas with the management which can lead the organisation to the success.
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