Virgin Airlines Richard Branson

irgin group is considered to be one of the most rapidly expanding, flamboyant and innovative organization. Virgin group is the leading private player of United Kingdom with annual revenue of almost $ 4 billion (Allinson, 1999). The major part of revenue is contributed by virgin Atlantic – International airline business of Virgin group. The Virgin group spans over 200 businesses from entertainment store to railways and from soft drinks to condoms. This Business Management Assignment will discuss the challenges faced by Virgin group and how the top leadership manages the Virgin group.

The structure of the group is very complex and as it is a private owned organization, it is very difficult to consolidate the revenue and balance sheet of all the organization. So it becomes very difficult to calculate the consolidated profit and loss of the virgin group as whole. This organization also does not have yearend common accounting for the whole firm (Kornberger & Pitsis, 2005).

The subsidiaries or individual units which are loosely interlinked and run as autonomous organizations with self managed group and uses the parent brand name of Virgin, thus the organization structure is defined as ‘keiretsu' organization. The emphasis and attention is laid on temporary goals or short-term motive of high chargeable earnings as well as vigorous dividends.4

The travel & tourism sector is one of the most booming sectors in United Kingdom presently and is also one which requires a lot of HR support due to the number of people generally involved in delivering the service. For our study we have taken Virgin Atlantic.

Virgin Atlantic is a British airline company. Sir Richard Branson's of the Virgin Group is the major owner. The company has two principal owners - The Virgin Group which owns 51% of the airline, and Delta Air Lines which owns the remaining forty nine percent. Virgin Atlantic is headquartered in Crawley, West Sussex, England, near Gatwick Airport.

Virgin Atlantic was founded in 1984. Virgin Atlantic's original planned route decided by its co-founders Randolph Fields and Alan Hellary was to fly between London and the Falkland Islands. Virgin Atlantic's maiden flight from Gatwick to Newark Liberty International Airport took place after the duo met Sir Richard Branson of Virgin Group and renamed the airline Virgin Atlantic.

Since, its inception Virgin Atlantic has grown at a dramatic pace using a mixed fleet of Boeing Jets and Air bus and has operations in the United States, the Caribbean, Africa, the Middle East, Asia & of course the United Kingdom. Its base of operation is in London with branches in Manchester, Heathrow and Gatwick.

As of 2012, Virgin Atlantic has a total of more than 6 million passengers making it in the 6th largest airline in terms of passenger traffic in the United Kingdom.

For a vast organization such as Virgin Atlantic it is important for them to have a well laid out training and development program as well compensation and incentive programs, as the there are various levels of staffs compromising the total employee base. These programs have to be tailor made so that it could satisfy needs of every level rather than having a same standard procedure