Project Materials

THE DEMAND FOR SECRETARIAL SERVICE: ITS PROSPECTS AND PROBLEMS

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

Background of the Study 

The effectiveness of a company’s female secretaries is crucial to the company’s overall success. As is generally recognised, a company’s success is directly correlated to the quality of its records. Since accurate record keeping is the bedrock of the secretarial profession, the importance of a female secretary in this area cannot be overstated.

A company’s assets include both its employees and its physical space. In order to achieve a specific objective, these resources are pooled together. A female secretary is essential to the smooth operation of any organisation; in fact, no group can function well without one.

Computers, electronic typewriters, photographing-Marching, etc., have revolutionised the modern office and the function of the female secretary.

A female secretary with the proper training is required to operate this sophisticated machinery. There has been a recent uptick in the prominence of the female secretary, who is now an integral part of every successful business.

A female secretary is “an assistant to an executive who possesses mastery of office skills and ability to assume responsibilities without direct supervision, one who displays initiatives, exercises judgement and makes decisions within the scope of her authority,” according to the National Secretarial Association (international) (1990).

World Book Encyclopaedia (1991) offers an alternative description of a female secretary, stating that “a person whose duties includes maintaining office files and records, taking dictation, typing correspondence, sorting mails, aiding visitors, answering telephone, and make travel arrangements.”

A female secretary can be found in a wide variety of roles. An organization’s female secretary is often depicted as multitasking, as she is responsible for maintaining, accessing, and documenting several types of information. According to Horison (1976), a female secretary is responsible for the following duties:

Taking notes and typing them up on a typewriter.

Arranging documents in a way that allows for easy retrieval

Receiving guests and managing phone calls

Maintain the office’s petty cash register.

Maintaining your boss’s journal and writing up his official

Overseeing your secretarial or staff

Making sure to be present at meetings and taking careful notes. According to Segal (1978), a female secretary in a top-level position may even fill in for her employer when he is out of the office, taking care of day-to-day operations and holding off on making higher-level decisions until he gets back.

According to the United States Business Management (1965), an effective female secretary is well-versed in all aspects of her executive role, has clear career goals, and understands how those goals relate to the organization’s overall objectives.

She is a realistic thinker with a good memory who can get by with little oversight as long as she follows the organization’s established protocols and guidelines.

A female secretary is in high demand due to the services she provides to organisations. It is essential for a female secretary to plan and execute in order for her office to run smoothly.

This includes knowing when to use her subordinates and the office machines, as well as keeping track of her boss’s whereabouts through the preparation of a calendar. For example, what’s required because the boss is going on a four-day tour to Lagos next week?

How can he arrange for his lodging and plane ticket in advance? To the airport, which driver would you recommend? His timetable of time has to be arranged.

Otherwise he would be stranded in his tour and also female secretary serves as public relation office, because of the nature of her office female secretary prepare and organized things to be discuss in a meeting for any organization to achieve its aims and objective, must acquire the service of the female secretary.

In 1930, Tarr stated, “planning is to direct a project in a way that will produce maximum useful work output from a minimum number of staff.” So, to achieve predetermined objectives, one must engage in planning.

It is worth noting that secretarial services are in high demand in both public and private organisations. With this in mind, this study examines the potential and challenges of this demand in four Kaduna metropolis institutions: Bank of the North (BON), Union Bank of Nigerian Plc (UBN), Nigerian telecommunication (Nitel), and New Nigerian development Company (NNDC).

The word “prospect” was defined by Gem (1984) as “expectations, opportunity for success, perspective. In the secretarial services, challenges have proven to be “things that are difficult to deal with or understand,” as described by Harbby (1991).

Statement Of The Problem

As we transition to a paperless office, some groups believe that female secretaries will have it easier. Some even considered that the female secretary lack modern competence and cannot fit in the offices to day where current technologies foster, because they do not have the modern training in computers. Most organization under-estimate the services/ role played by the female secretary in an organization.

On the other hand, most of the female secretaries do not know the demand of their occupation in an organization. Moreover, female secretaries have limited degree of promotion which act as a master impediment in their career.

PURPOSE OF THE STUDY

The goal of the study is to find out the potential and challenges of female secretaries in some selected organizations in Kaduna metropolitan, They are as follows:

Ø To examine the challenges in which female secretary is encountering in an organization.

To determine the different opportunities for a female secretary in a company

Finding out what a female secretary does for a company and the several responsibilities she plays

Unlike their male counterparts in other fields, female secretaries do not have the same prospects for advancement, so it is important to find out why.

The goal is to determine how well office services are managed and how contemporary technology impacts these processes.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS

What are the challenges and opportunities faced by organisations that employ female secretaries?

How does a female secretary contribute to an organisation in different ways?

What are the elements that make it harder for female secretaries to advance in their careers?

Explain how the organization’s planning and operations are facilitated by contemporary office technology.

The significance Of The Study

Because of the crucial role that secretaries play in organisations, they are vital. The following would benefit from this research, which is now urgently needed:

i. Businesses that hire people to work Any business that needs secretaries on staff will find this study to be an invaluable resource. Reason being, they will be well-informed about the value of female secretaries in the office and the demand for their services.

section two: practice secretaries Praising secretaries will benefit from this study since it will increase their understanding of the secretarial function in connection to the need for secretarial services, which in turn allows the organisation to fulfil its goals.

iii) Class participants This study will provide students studying secretarial science a better understanding of the need for secretarial services in various organisations.

section four: course work in secretarial science In order to make sure that the importance of female secretaries is not left out of the school’s annual curriculum, this study will be useful for the secretarial studies department as a whole and as a resource for secretaries and professors in particular.

v. Researchers of the future

Researchers in the future will profit from this study since it will provide them with useful information for similar studies.

Scope of the Study

Secretaries with credentials such as an Ordinary National Diploma (OND), Higher National Diploma (HND), certificate, or appropriate secretarial training are in high demand, according to this study.

Additionally, this study relies on the following institutions: BON, UBN, Nitel, and NNDC, all of which are located in the Kaduna metropolitan area: Nigerian Telecommunication, Bank of the North, and Union Bank of Nigeria.

 Definition of Terms

The following term is used in this study effort and is intended to be understood as follows:

An organisation is a method or act of arranging a big collection of individuals into a unified whole, as in a corporation.

A female secretary is someone who works in the office and is responsible for doing clerical or secretarial tasks, such as keeping records and dealing with letters.

A place where administrative tasks are performed is called an office.

College, high school, polytechnic, and university courses make up what is known as the curriculum.

The boss is the person in charge of the employees and issues them commands.

Topics of significant interest, both inside and beyond the company, documented in writing.