The most complex, and most times difficult department to manage in an organization is the personnel, i.e. people working there. Proper and adequate management of the human resource of any organization, be it business, government, military, religious or academic organization propels the growth of the organization and brings about a conducive working environment. Every other resources or factors in an organization depend on the human factor, thereby making the need for proper personnel management eminent.
Personnel management begins with recruitment of qualified persons for an organization, it then spans through directing their growth through the ranks. It is also concerned with classification of jobs, preparation of wages, fixation of salary scales of employees at all various levels in the organization. Personnel management is also responsible for creating disciplinary action and counseling for errant employees, development of safety standards and best practices, managing benefit programs in respect to employees such as retirement, leaves, welfare, health and group insurance.
An automated web based personnel management system helps reduce the tediousness of the task of manual personnel management system and increases efficiency and dependability of the personnel management department by reducing the human activities in personnel management using Management Information System (MIS) which makes use of database of an organization to produce well-structured forms of reports.
Organizations have many operational functions, and human resource department is one of the functions that are quite engaging. In the early 70s, there was no division called Human Resource Department, the only department existing as at that time was called “personnel” which was engaged with welfare of employees.
Personnel management was introduced towards the end of the 19th
century. At a time, it focused on the welfare of labour in organizations. According to the task they do, the officers at personnel department were called “welfare officers”. One special thing is that the employee welfare tasks were done by women at that time. Within 1914 to 1939, many organizations have shown a quick growth and change in their needs and wants of operations, therefore the task done by women shifted to men, because of the complexity of the task. These officers were called labour managers at that time.After the Second World War, between 1945 and 1979, the labour organization has grown up and changed to personnel management, and it focused basically on employee administration and the legislation. By then the economy of the world changed gradually and organizations started to consider labour as an important resource. At the decade of 80, the concept “Human Resource Management” was started and has shown growth gradually by the decade of 90. Finally the task and operations of Personnel Management was shifted to Human Resource Management and it is functioning now in broader ways in organizations than Personnel Management.
Personnel Management has remained the most complex aspect of every institution, and a proper analysis of the traditional system has led to discovery of deficiencies in the old system.
The traditional system has some deficiencies in immediate retrieval of information. Personnel officers have to manually search through stack of files to get information.
The human nature is prone to error and this can escalate to unforeseen dangers.
Personnel Management tasks like preparation of wages and allowances can be quite time consuming when done manually.
Sentiments and tribalism can lead to partiality which in turn causes undue favoritism.
In the traditional system, the personnel officers must be physically present in the office to work; this reduces their ability and functionality.
Cost of employing and training a large number of personnel officers so as to take care of the human resource might not be cost effective.
In addition, report of cases of missing files, destruction of files and records in case of fire outbreaks and cost of purchasing stationaries and furniture further compounds the inefficiency of the old system.
The main aim of this study is to design an automated Personnel Management System for Nnamdi Azikiwe University Awka. The system will be able to perform functions such as:
This research work will concentrate on staff recruitment form which contains biometric data like name, sex, blood group/genotype, marital status, home address, phone number, etc. the study will also cover training and performance assessment, responding to complaints and handling of queries like, updating staff record, deleting of employee’s record and searching for staff via rank and or staff ID as the case may be. It finally handles retirement of staff.
Great emphasis has been placed on speed, efficiency, effectiveness, reliability, security and ease of access in systems in the information age. This work is aimed at creating this effect on the present traditional system. The study intends to give birth to an automated Personnel Management System that will eliminate some, if not all the problems associated with the traditional system of personnel management like those under the problem statement. It will also allow the personnel managers of Nnamdi Azikiwe University to carry out their duties even while at home through the internet.
This work may not apply if the existing personnel management functions of the university are no longer in existence, since the study is based on the current problem of the personnel department. Other limitations include:
1.7 Definition of Terms
Personnel: it is the employees and staff of an organization. It also refers to the department in an organization that deals with employee’s records, hiring and retirement.
Management: it is the coordination of all the resources of an organization through the process of planning, organizing, directing and controlling.
Recruitment: the process of finding candidates for a vacant position in an organization.
Human Resource Management: used interchangeably with Personnel Management and People Management.
Labour: workforce of an organization or workers in general.
Legislation: the act of enacting rules, standards and guidelines that governs an organization.
Automation: The processes of making a system carry out its processes on its own without much human intervention.
Design: it is a detailed plan or arrangement to achieve a particular purpose.
Program: it is a set of instructions and procedures that tell a computer what to do.
Application: a program designed to perform a particular task.
Researchers: this refers to the developers of the system in study (i.e. Goodness and Michael).
Users: here, it refers to the personnel managers or anybody using the program.