RECORDS MANAGEMENT PRACTICES, COMPUTER LITERACY SKILLS AND JOB PERFORMANCE OF REGISTRY STAFF OF UNIVERSITIES IN OGUN STATE, NIGERIA

ABSTRACT

Best records management practices and computer literacy skills promote job performance of university registry staff through the records they create, use and maintain, hence the university administration rely much on it for quality decision making.  Then, the presence of information technology seems to improve the job performance of registry staff of universities as they upgrade from their work from manual to electronic method. However, many students had bitter experiences as their records are mismanaged and retrieval of their urgent records delayed by the registry staff which has great implication to the university at large. This predicament could be as a result of improper records management practices and inadequate computer literacy skills. It is in light of this that the present study investigated records management practices, computer literacy skills and job performance of university registry staff in Ogun state, Nigeria.

The study adopted a survey research design. The population of the study consisted of 1311 university registry staff in Ogun State, Nigeria.  The sample size of 300 registry staff were randomly selected. A validated questionnaire titled “Records management practices, computer literacy skills and job performance of university registry staff of Ogun State universities” was used to collect data from the respondents.  For the reliability and validation of the instrument, the overall Cronbach’s alpha reliability coefficient obtained for all the variables was 0.82.  The data collected from the study were analyzed using descriptive statistics and multiple regression analysis with significant level fixed at alpha of 0.05.

The findings of the study revealed records management practices in registry of Ogun State universities include records creation, classification, security, storage, retrieval, tracking and destruction. The study revealed also that computer literacy skills is good. It shows also that there was a significant relationship between records management practices and job performance (R² = .085, P<.05).  The result equally showed that there was no significant relationship between computer literacy skills and job performance of university registry staff (F = 1.378, P>.05). While the combined result of records management practices and computer literacy skills revealed that computer literacy skills when considered with records management practices jointly also do not have effect on the job performance of registry staff (R² = 0.60, P<.05).

The study concluded that records management practices contributed immensely to the job performance of registry staff in Universities in Ogun State Nigeria as computer literacy skills did not significantly influence registry staff job performance. It is recommended that university registry staff should uphold their job performance, and should be encouraged to improve themselves with computer literacy skills in order to meet-up with technological advancement and also to beat their competitors in the university industry.  Finally, the university administration should provide adequate fund to the registry department to enable them perform their job effectively.

Keywords: Records management practice, Computer literacy skills, Job Performance, Registry Staff, Ogun State, Nigeria