CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.0 Introduction

Human resources database management system is an electronic record management system that can aid human resources managers to capture and store HR 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 acquisition, 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:

Human Resource Planning: Human resource planning involves analyzing current human resource capacity; forecasting human resource needs and identifying any gaps between the two. Human resource planning is particularly useful when combined with other types of strategic planning such as community and business plans.

Job Descriptions: Effective and meaningful job descriptions are essential to any human resource development system. Job descriptions act as the blueprint in terms of what needs to be done and the type of person needed for the job. Job descriptions also form the basis for many other elements of the system including recruitment and selection, performance evaluation and training and development.

Recruitment and Selection: Probably the most important element in any human resource development system is recruitment and selection. Finding and hiring the right people is absolutely critical to the success or failure of any organization. Recruitment and selection is the most important part of the Community Government Human Resources  development System. It is the process of finding and hiring the right person for a job in the right way. Recruitment is how you attract quality candidates to apply for vacant positions. Examples of recruitment include advertising the position, attending career fairs, making direct contacts with people and so on. The type of recruitment that you use will depend on the type of position and the availability of quality, local candidates. Selection is the means used to determine which of the candidates is best suited for the job. The selection process includes conducting interviews, holding job related tests and contacting references.

Personnel Records: 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

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

Human resource 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 human resource database management system 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 human resource database management system

To integrate the vital components of human resource management into a single software system.

To develop a human resource management system that will present reports pertaining to any employee or group of employees

To develop a system that can be used to update human resource information when needed.

1.4 Scope of the Study

This study covers the design and implementation of human resource database management system using Exxon Mobil, Eket as a case study.

1.5 Significance of the Study

The significance of the study is that it will provide an integrated system to manage human resources 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.