DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF EMPLOYEE RECORDS MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

The concept of record keeping is not new. The records management profession is as old as the first societal groups because the need for a memory arises naturally in any organization. The most ancient forms of memory were oral and the most ancient keepers of records were the remembrances, individuals entrusted with the task of memorizing rules, contracts, sentences and transmitting them by recitation to their juniors (Duranti 1993:30). The frailty of human memory and the growing complexity of administration gave birth to the graphic representations of events in pictorial form (Maedke, Robek & Brown 1974:19). However, simply recording information or having records is not the same as managing records. There have been major inventions that have had a significant impact on records management, for example, writing paper, the typewriter, microfilming, and computer. By the 1980s most archivists, academicians and records managers acknowledged that managing and preserving electronic records were among the most challenging problems facing their profession (Blouin 1996:1). For example, computer systems change rapidly and there is no guarantee that today‘s software will be readable by tomorrow‘s hardware (Mullon 2004:7; Ngoaketsi 2003:31). The other problem is that of media deterioration‘(Cloonan & Sanett 2002:70). These records are by nature fragile and impermanent, for example, they can be written, rewritten, cut and pasted, send to the other end or deleted (Ngoepe 2003:47). The practice of using computers has grown tremendously with the norm now being for almost every worker to have a PC on his/her desk. Today the computer is performing all the traditional functions of records management and managing records in ways that were not feasible before the computer age. Most institutions like academic, governmental, and commercial institutions need some system to address questions related to tracking and storing of data about their employees. Electronic Staff Data Management System commonly provides a solution for the access, review, upload and download of the electronic documents about employees.