Description

CHAPTER ONE

1.1   INTRODUCTION

Staff records department in a firm or in an organization like ours is a department that gathers information regarding staff statistics and condition of service. This information is obtained continually to ensure continuity in staff management.

The conversional methods of keeping the 0se records are basically the same in higher institutions.

With so much importance attached to the provision of quality records in this   information age, then the need to follow the trend of information technology (I.T) to speed up and reduce the stress in manual method of keeping records. To achieve this, an object oriented programming language like visual basic 6.0 is used to develop the software.

1.2    BACKGROUND OF STUDY

The federal polytechnic Nekede Owerri was initially established as a college of technology Owerri by edict No.16 dated 1^st April, 1978. In 1987 it was renamed, the polytechnic by the Imo state government.

The institution was taken over by the federal government in April 1993 and is now governed by the federal polytechnic act to perform the following functions:

1. a) To provide full- time or part –time courses of instruction and training:
2. On such other fields of applied science, commerce and management, and
3. On such other fields of applied learning relevant to the needs of the development of Nigeria in the area of industrial and agricultural production and distribution and for research in the development and adaptation of techniques as the council may from time to time determine:

1. b) To arrange conference, seminars and study groups relative to the fields of learning specified in paragraph (a) of this subsection (1):
2. c) To perform such function as in the opinion of the council may serve to promote the objectives of the polytechnic.

At the early stage of this institution staff was few, therefore making the retrieval of information from files very easy. At this early stage, updating staff files was an easy task.  The management on any of the department could go through all folders to make out staff list, compile all the staff salary for a given period of time and it was very easy to monitor the efficiency of each staff.

Today the numbers of staff have increased tremendously which makes it a bit difficult to update the records of staff. Because of this constrain the reason for user application software that could implement all these at the click of a button.

• STATEMENT OF PROBLEM

Institutions, organizations and banks in Nigeria at the earlier stages of their inception have been manually operated. That is, records are organized, accessed, and retrieved by human beings manually. This manual method made the whole thing very difficult to handle.

With the increase in staff in our institution, the above method has been proven very difficult and tedious to work upon. The problems faced here are:

1. Poor statistics about a particular staff: this may be as a result of lost or misplaced staff files
2. Longer Waiting Time: The record clerk wastes so much time in bringing a staff folders. In case the management needs the record for a particular staff, it takes the clerk time to manually organize the data and bring it to the destination where it is needed. Thereby contributing to time wastage.
3. Inaccurate Staff Report: Sometimes staff report are not properly stated and reported. This results to questionable report being sent to management for planning.
4. Mishandling of Staff Folders: Staff folders are often handled with little or no regard. This leads to detaching and tearing away of some of the staff important documents.
5. Unrestricted Access To Staff Records: Due to poor security checks in most institutions, staff records which are main to be confidential are exposed to unauthorized persons.

These and more contribute to inefficient records keeping.

• OBJECTIVE OF STUDY

The purpose of this project work is to develop an automated staff record system that could speed up records job efficiently and effectively, and also reduce the cost of labour.

Up-To-Date RECORDS OF STAFF ARE KEPT: This allows for easy retrieval of staff files when the need arises. Staff data are kept up-to-date so as to enhance the assessment of the staff both for future, present and past records.

This can also be used for staff appraisal and also help to monitor the conduct of the staff at a glance through the records. By viewing the database, vital information for planning, staff equipment and the welfare of the institution is obtained thus improving resources allocation.

Staff records are stored by the system: This will eliminate the problem of lost files thereby improving record services tendered   by the records department.

In a networked environment, terminals or workstation should be present only at the records room and the personnel or administration manager’s office. The software should include security checks to prevent unauthorized access to confidential records of a staff stored in the system’s database. The software would be menu-driven to provide a user-friendly environment

1.5   SIGNIFICANCE OF STUDY

This work serves as a launching pad for federal polytechnic Nekede Owerri to enhance the recording system by computerization of their record department.

This project work is breaking new grounds in the area of computerization of staff record department; it will serve as a stepping-stone for student researchers and her interested explorer in this field.

Though this software is designed using Federal Polytechnic Owerri as a case study any other institution or firm can use the software with just a little modification.

1.6   SCOPE OF STUDY

The extent to be covered in this project work is, this work creates a database for the staff record department for federal polytechnic Nekede. This project work is going to cover the staff form, arrival report form and annual leave form. With the system on the network the personnel director can view the staff record at a glance, which will help him to know the number of work force he has. It will help him know the number of staff in each department and the department that needs more or less staff.

1.7   LIMITATION AND DELIMITATION OF STUDY

During the course of this project work, some limitations were encountered. These limitations are:

• TIME: The time to get information about non academic staff records did not come very easily. Because most of the days I will be ask to come back after one week to enable them gather information for me. This is an academic environment where time is allocated to other courses, making it almost impossible to handle the project work more efficiently.
• INADEQUATE AND IRRELEVANT MATERIALS: most of the materials and information given to me are not in line with the project work, there by delaying the work.