CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.0 Introduction

In a local government, there are data to be collected, processed and stored for reference purposes, especially those concerning the personnel in the local government. Conducting these operations manually creates many protocols that delay office job delivery. As such, officials sought means to better their operations by using new technological means that will hasten office activities and speed up data processing. To achieve this, information technology (IT) is being employed. Personnel Information system is an electronic record management system that can aid human resources managers to capture and store personnel information in a computer system to facilitate planning and management of human resources. Human Resources Management (HRM) is management function that helps managers to recruit, select, train and develop members for an organization. Obviously HRM is concerned with the people’s dimensions in organizations. HRM refers to set of programs, functions, and activities designed and carried out. The Core elements of HRM are:

• People: Organizations mean people. It is the people who staff and manage organizations.
• Management: HRM involves application of management functions and principles for acquisitioning, developing, maintaining and remunerating employees in organizations.
• Integration & Consistency: Decisions regarding people must be integrated and consistent.
• Influence: Decisions must influence the effectiveness of organization resulting into betterment of services to customers in the form of high quality products supplied at reasonable cost.
• Applicability: HRM principles are applicable to business as well as non-business organizations too, such as education, health, recreation and the like.

Other functions of human resources management include:

Personnel records are important as they depict the employee’s employment relationship with an organization. It is important that they be maintained and updated. This section lists what should be included in the personnel file as well as the different processes used when accessing the records if needed. An integrated human resource system is one where all elements of the system fit together and support each other. A software system can be developed that integrates basic human resources functions. For example, the job description is typically used as the basis for the recruitment and selection, performance evaluation and training and development. Likewise the information gained through the recruitment and selection process can be used for performance appraisals, training and development and so on.

1.1 Theoretical Background

Personnel also known as human resources are the most vital to organizations and there is a need to ensure that they are properly managed and that their activities are monitored efficiently such that reports can be presented pertaining the details of each and every employee or human resource. To achieve this, there is a great need to adopt computer systems due to their advantage of speed, high volume of storage and instant presentation of data stored. This will better organize the duties of human resource managers and facilitate better record management. A database is a collection of related records and this can be applied to human resources management.

1.2 Statement of Problem

Personnel management involves a lot of paper work and the consequence of this is that it is difficult to manage human resource information. There are different aspects of human resources and management and the manual system of recording human resource information makes it difficult to integrate and get reports pertaining to human resource. The flat file organization occupies unnecessary office space in addition to making information retrieval difficult and time consuming. It is in view of these challenges that this study is carried out to develop a human resource database management system that will facilitate the capturing and easy retrieval of human resources information reports.

1.3 Aim and Objectives of the Study

The aim of the study is to design and implement a personnel information system for local governments that will eliminate the problem of instantly getting human resource information when needed with minimum human effort. The following are the objectives of the study:

• To implement a functional personnel information management system
• To integrate the vital components of human resource management into a single software system.
• To develop a personnel information system that will present reports pertaining to any employee or group of employees
• To develop a system that can be used to update personnel information when needed.

1.4 Scope of the Study

This study covers the design and implementation of local government personnel information system, a case study of Ikot Ekpene local government Secretariat.

1.5 Significance of the Study

The significance of the study is that it will provide an integrated system for the local government to manage personnel information, eliminate flat file organization, maintain an electronic database, facilitate the presentation of human resource information reports and generally organize the operations of human resources management to meet the basic human resource management information need of the organization.

1.6 Organization of the Research

This research work is organized into five chapters. Chapter one is concerned with the introduction of the research study and it presents the preliminaries, theoretical background, statement of the problem, aim and objectives of the study, significance of the study, scope of the study, organization of the research and definition of terms.

Chapter two focuses on the literature review, the contributions of other scholars on the subject matter is discussed.

Chapter three is concerned with the system analysis and design. It analyzes the present system to identify the problems and provides information on the advantages and disadvantages of the proposed system. The system design is also presented in this chapter.

Chapter four presents the system implementation and documentation. The choice of programming language, analysis of modules, choice of programming language and system requirements for implementation.

Chapter five focuses on the summary, conclusion and recommendations are provided in this chapter based on the study carried out.

1.7 Definition of Terms

Human Resources: Refers to personnel or all the people who work in a business or organization

Management: the organizing and controlling of the affairs of a business or a sector of a business

Database: a systematically arranged collection of computer data, structured so that it can be automatically retrieved or manipulated.