DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF AN ONLINE APPRAISAL SYSTEM FOR RAPIDO FOODS

1.1 Introduction

The success of any organization depends on the quality and characteristics of its employees. The employees become a significant factor in any organization since they are the heart of the organization. Organizations simply cannot achieve their goals and objectives without them. However, it is a fact that any employee for that matter needs something to induce him or her to look forward to so that he or she is motivated to work at the best interest of the organization. This indeed was indicative of the more strategic approach to Appraisal and Assessment Management policies which sought to connect the aims of the organization to the performance of the individual. The organization's key aims, goals, and objectives become an embedded part of the process in the performance management and communicated through the performance appraisal process. Performance appraisal is “an approach which involves managers making a top-down assessment and rating the performance of their subordinates at an annual performance appraisal meeting”.

As a prelude to other parts of this study, this chapter will discuss the background upon which this study was initiated, the statement of problems that led to this study, the Aim and Objectives of the study. Others are Significance of the study, Scope of work, Limitations of the Study and Definition of technical terms.

1.2 Background of Study

Performance systems, in various forms, have been employed for nearly two millennia. In the third century AD, the Chinese were not only using performance appraisal systems but were critiquing each other's been biases in their evaluations of their employees (Murphy and Cleveland, 4; Evans, 3).

During the Industrial Revolution of the 18th century, factory managers became aware of the importance of their employees' performance on their production outputs (Grote and Grote, 3; Murphy and Cleveland, 4). The development of the philosophy of performance evaluation systems in America has been attributed to such researchers and philosophers as Peter Drucker and Douglas McGregor, who developed ideas of management by objectives (MBOs) and employee motivation (Evans, 4; Murphy and Cleveland, 3). Spiegel reported in 1962 that by the early 1960s more than 60% of American organizations had a performance appraisal system.

The system's popularity stemmed from the Army's implementation of a performance management system for its officers (Murphy and Cleveland, 3). Since then, researchers have continued to develop theories of how different performance evaluation methods can contribute to the success of the organization. Appraisal is an annual process done in Rapido Ventures Limited, Owerri to know the performance of the staff and productivity in relation to certain criteria and departmental objectives and also to document and evaluate the performance of the staff. That is, in performance appraisal, the performance evaluations can serve as effective tools for improving the staff performance and productivity as well as determining staff developmental need. Implemented properly, regular performance reviews can raise individual self-esteem and deepen the relationship between Human Resources (HR) and the staff.

1.3 Statement of Problem

The problems identified in the present system include the following:

1. High cost of acquiring papers and other stationeries for keeping records.
2. Lack of good security for record.
3. Misplacement and mishandle of information in the office.
4. Lack of effectiveness in their daily routine compounds the problem of management in an organization.

1.4 Aim and Objectives of the Study

The aim of this project work is to design an online appraisal system for Rapido Foods. In achieving this aim, the following specific objectives were laid out as follows to design and develop an application software that will:

1. Reduce the cost of acquiring paper and other stationeries by creating a system that will automate record keeping in the department.
2. Eliminate misplacement and mishandle of files in the office by creating a system that will help in information storing and retrieving.
3. Enhance productivities in the office by automating the evaluation of personnel in the department.
4. Manage personnel information effectively with the aid of the automated system.

1.5 Significance of Study

This work could be useful for managers or officers in an organization as well as those involved in research work on management. However, this research work would let us know that the success of an organization largely depends on the assessment and appraisal of individuals and company employee's potential, performance and how well the organization can strive to equip all its workers.

Hence, this research work will be of immense assistance to the organizational environment because personnel will be able to find the best solution to the various problems as the computerized appraisal system software will play a very big role in removing the stress in personnel management. Other anticipated benefits include:

1. To create a system that will effectively manage information in the office.
2. To create a system for easy retrieval and maintenance of information.
3. To provide a secured and reliable storing system of information.
4. To determine the effectiveness of appraisal system in the organization.

1.6 Scope of the Study

This research work will concentrate on staff employment form, performance assessment and appraisal, retirement and handling of some queries. It is a case study of Rapido Foods Limited, Owerri, Imo State.

1.7 Limitations of the Study

During the course of this study, many things militated against its completion, some of which are:

1. Insufficient material and relevant information from the case study: The process of getting information from staff in Rapido Foods LTD was not encouraging, as the staff finds it difficult to release or explain certain processes which are very relevant for design of the new system.
2. Inadequate funds: Research of this magnitude involves a lot of money. However, there was insufficient fund to carry out some research work as the project is being sponsored by the researcher who incidentally is an undergraduate.

1.8 Definition of Terms

Data: They are values, numbers, quantities or instruction by the computer user. Data are raw facts or figure that are not yet processed.

Employment: the state of having paid work.

Computer: A computer is an electronic machine that is capable of solving problems by accepting data, performing prescribed operation on the data accepting and supply the result of those operations.

Database: a structured set of data held in a computer, especially one that is accessible in various ways.

Employee: a person employed for wages or salary, especially at non-executive level.

Information: It is the result of processing data

Performance Appraisal: PA is the activity, which enables systematic identification of job-related strengths and weaknesses among individual employees and between employee groups.

Personnel: It is a department in a firm, which deals with employees.

Management: It is the co-ordination of all the resources of an organization through the process of planning, organization, directing and controlling in order to attain organizational objectives.

Public Sector: The industries and services that are owned and run by the government.

Private Sector: The industries and services that are owned and run by private companies and not by the state or government.

Performance: The amount of useful work accomplished by a computer system compared to the time and resources used or when more work is accomplished in shorter time.

Processing: Is the series of things that need to be done in achieving a particular result.

Resource: a stock or supply of money, materials, staff, and other assets that can be drawn on by a person or organization in order to function effectively.

Storage: IT means a space where things or object are been kept.

System: A system is a regularly interacting or interdependent group of items forming a unified.

Websites: Is the collection of related WebPages linked together as to create a web presence for an entity is it an individual, organization or government body

Web browser: The program that serves as your frontend to the worldwide web on the internet.

Apache: The PHP translation engine. The Apache HTTP Server, commonly referred to as Apache, is a web server application notable for playing a key role in the initial growth of the World Wide Web.

PHP: Hypertext Processor; A server-side scripting language, used for web designing and web programming. PHP is a server-side scripting language designed for web development but also used as a general-purpose programming language.

HTML: Hypertext Markup Language used for content presentation.

JavaScript: JavaScript (JS) is an interpreted computer programming language. As part of web browsers, implementations allow client-side scripts to interact with the user, control the browser, communicate asynchronously, and alter the document content that is displayed.

Ajax: Ajax an acronym for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML is a group of interrelated web development techniques used on the client-side to create asynchronous web applications.

MySQL: MySQL officially, but also called "My Sequel" is (as of July 2013) the world's second most widely used open-source relational database management system (RDBMS).

Localhost: In computer networking, localhost means this computer. It is a hostname that the computer's software and users may employ to access the computer's own network services via its loopback network interface.

XAMPP: XAMPP is a free and open source cross-platform web server solution stack package, consisting mainly of the Apache HTTP Server, MySQL database, and interpreters for scripts written in the PHP and Perl programming languages.

SQL: Structured Query Language is a special-purpose programming language designed for managing data held in a relational database management system (RDBMS).

CSS: Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a style sheet language used for describing the look and formatting of a document written in a markup language.