CHAPTER ONE

PROJECT WORK

Title: Title: Factors affecting performance of personal Secretaries in Ilala District Dar es Salaam.

1.1 Introduction and Background

Secretaries are the people employed in office mainly to help the office typing duties, protection
of files and various data, access information and deal with other related office duties protection
of files and various data, access information and deal with other related office duties.

For any company or organization run smoothly or without hard setbacks it requires the present of
secretaries. The reasons mainly being that a secretary helps the office to faction smoothly, do
protect office data from files and elect rain folders, and performing general assistant work to the
management.

1.2 Background of the Study

The word Secretary has been defined as;

One entrusted with the confidence despondence and manage router and detail work for superior

According to Secretaries have other managerial duties of dictation from the answering telephone calls,
getting information, recording and keeping information duplicating machine electric and manual type of
writer, computer international telex anal so office being nerve center of an organization needs good
management to archive its goals.

However there are certain factors which affect Secretaries while on job and minder production and
Secretaries stability on this program.

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1.3 Statement of the Problem

In most of public and private offices, institutions, companies organization and such alike,
secretaries form a very crucial link, centre point for communication. That being the case, for
communication to be effective (complete), language use and mastering is a must as it is the
medium of communication.

It is degrading and understatement to say that career is of no important Secretary is an eye opener.
Through which every organization sees.

As Secretary is a skilled and specialized type of employee in an establishment or part of it charged with some
aspects of organization function in the unit dealing with People.

In today modern word Secretaries are faced with a lot of challenges offices due to that they are required to
offer. Therefore it is basically necessary that Secretaries be giver equipment in institute of Management and
technology and other tertiary institution.

1.4 The Rationale (reasons) for undertaking such a project work

To investigate the limitations facing secretaries to work performance.

To investigate of efficiency on secretarial works in public offices

To find out the impact brought by professional secretaries in the improvement

1.5 Significance of the study

Comments and suggestions will cause reform in the Ilala District

It will eventually improve provision of services in Public offices in Tanzania.

This study will help to define more clearly the role of language in communication to the
professional secretary in provision of Public services to the country.

It will further explain the root causes towards in English communication to secretaries

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 Suggestions at recommendation to the study work will influence changes to be adapted
for

Better provisions of services.

It will cause further more to appreciate the role of language in communication to the
professional secretary in provision of Public services to the country.

1.6 General Objectives

To understand the role of secretaries in public work organization.

1.6 Specific objectives

To investigate barriers of limitations facing secretaries
Assessing capacity development needs for secretaries in both Kiswahili and English
mastering
Recommend for solution to be taken
1.7 Research questions

What is the role of the professional secretary in Public work Organization?

How do personal secretaries apply in enhancing public service

State the usefulness of secretaries in delivery of services to the public

State the relationship between secretaries and better provision of educational services.

How the Ilala District does benefited from professional secretaries.

1.8 Limitation of the Study

In the endeavour to conduct the research study, the researcher had gone through various
constraints of which stood as limitation to the research work, as follows;-

Time constraints, the study required enough time to go through data allocation and
accomplish the entire work. The study took place within a short period of time, this in
result played a big role to hinder the efficiency of the study.

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 Problem of fund, no fund was not allocated for the work, nor was there any sponsorship
for the research study. This lowered the efficiency of the research study as the researcher
was to be self funded.

Lack of effective co-operation, following the limited co-operation from the respondents,
the researcher found himself in a hard situation to affect the look within the short time
limited.

1.9 factors affecting performance of personal secretaries in Ilala district Dar es Salaam

Unavailability of Resources; Many Organizations have problem of resources such as computer

Rain paper, printer stamps and Scanner which can cause low performance of work and organization
cannot achieve its goals.

Poor Management; This is when the organization Management arranged in wrong way thus can
cause the Secretary to work a bad condition. Language barriers. This is problem inhere many office
language cause to develops the organization/Company and cooperation between Secretary and
other workers. Secretary must get good Language from his/her lain order to be free and
comfortable.

Overload of work; Some of Secretaries in organization faced with many work in the short time this
may cause tired and loose moral of work.

The unavailability of Modern Equipments; the Ilala District has not provided all the necessary
modern equipment to their secretarial staff. Leading the table of the available equipment is telephone
equipments (Land and mobile) recording

Level of knowledge and usage of office equipments; most of the secretaries have low level of using
office equipments that make them not to perform well in their day to day activities.

CHAPTER TWO

2.1 Introduction

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This chapter presents an exploration of the various perspectives on the subject of performance of

personal secretary and secretaries productivity. The first part of the review will focus defining a

secretary and evaluating the functions and roles associated with this practice. The second part

will address the concept of new or modern office technologies and their impact on performance

and the last part will discuss productivity and how it can be measured. This review is intended to

provide a theoretical framework that will shape data to be gathered from the primary sources.

2.2 The Concept Secretary

The word secretary simply means a person who works in an office and manages the organization.

Although a secretary is perceived more as a personal assistant or administrative assistant, the

professional secretary is one of the most essential human resources in a business organization

because he helps make the wheel of the organization to turn. Secretaries provide the unseen

services which make the organizations to prosper. Secretaries according to Ahukannah and

Ekelegbe (2008) are classified into four categories:

i. Professional Secretary: This is the secretary by reason of training, ethics, orientation

and skills. He must be an expert in shorthand writing, typewriting and use of computer

and ability to deal with office routine activities. This category (in other words termed as

confidential secretary) is the researcher area of concern.

ii. The Honorary Secretary: This is the one who is in charge of the correspondence,

records and other business affairs of a society, club and other associations. He is not a

professional secretary because he has not acquired the necessary skills/training.

iii. Private Secretary: This is an employee who deals with correspondence, keep records

and files in the office.

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 iv. Corporate/Company Secretary: Companies established under the Companies Act 1990

are normally required by the statute to engage the services of a Company Secretary. He/

She takes charge of the administration of the company, as well as functions as secretary

to the board of directors. Registrars of government establishment such as polytechnics,

universities et cetera are the secretaries of their various institutions who take charge of

general administration as well as cover the meetings of their various councils and

produce the minutes.

A secretary is a person, whose work consists of supporting management, including executives,

using a variety of professional ethics and communication and organizational skills. Wordnet

(2008) defines secretary as a person who assists a member of staff or top management level, and

who undertakes a lot of administrative tasks for the smooth running of the office. This definition

was confirmed by wikipedia (2008) where a secretary is seen as a person employed to write

orders, letters, dispatch public or private papers, records and the like, an official scribe, one who

attends to correspondence and transacts other business for an association, a public body, or an

individual.

A secretary is an indispensable element in achieving organizational goals. He serves as a memory

bank in his organization, scrutinizes visitors so as to give the executive enough time to do some

other office activities, keep records so as to prevent embracement and the lost of important

document which could consequently have a negative effect to the organization.

2.3 The Functions of a Secretary

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A thorough review of the duties and roles perform by secretaries requires a classification or

categorization of these functions. This classification allows a better understanding of the job the

secretaries perform. For the purpose of this discussion, a number of classifications of function

shall be reviewed below.

2.3.1 Administrative Functions of Secretary

An administrative function of a secretary involves organizing and controlling the organizational

activities in order to achieve the objectives of the organization. It also includes supervision of

junior staff and ensuring that schedules of work are being accomplished, directives and assigned

tasks completed within the time span, and ensuring that all the materials needed for performing

any particular job are available at the right time.

Ekwue (2009) advanced that a secretary must perform a variety of secretarial and office

management duties, composes, types and files letters and inter-office memos, receives calls and

interviews persons calling in office and makes referrals, prepares departmental records and

disciplinary notices. Performing any or all of the mentioned duties depicts that a secretary is

involved in an administrative function. Odiaua (2010) on his part included some duties like

maintaining files and personal records, reviews, organizes and maintains files, monitors

attendance including sick leave, annual leave and vacation leave, compiles and records data for

computer files, develops and implements new departmental forms, recommends and implements

changes in correspondence sent to public. All these as identified by Odiaua, save time for the

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executive/boss and make job easier. For secretary to effectively perform these duties, he must be

conversant with the policy of the organization.

2.3.2 Personnel Functions of a Secretary

The personnel roles of a secretary include membership of interview panels for junior staff and

assigning job schedules to staff. It also involves receiving, sorting and distributing mails within

the organization, composing replies to correspondences on behalf of the executive, identifying

and solving routine and non-routine problems by applying professional skills and techniques in

order to develop the variety of ideas and modify situations (Shuaibu, 2009).

Secretary relieves his employer the task of determining the organizational staff strength due to

the fact that he controls skills inventory, he does manpower forecasting (junior staff) and arrange

for the staff selection and assign job schedules. Bashar (2007) stated that skill inventory by a

secretary are the assessment of personnel currently within the organization by using skill

inventory data card. This determines the staff strengths or otherwise of the organization.

On the other hand, he states that manpower forecasting by a secretary is concerned with the

determination of manpower needs of the organization. The secretary through this process,

estimates the number and types of junior staff currently on the payroll who will be available in

the future (that is taking note of retirement, possible death and other opportunities in the

environment); and determining the number of staff that would be recruited externally.

A mail service in form of incoming and outgoing mails is another important personnel role of a

secretary. Ikelegbe and Miller (2011) opined that secretary must be conversant with the rules of

incoming mails/correspondences, rules/procedures for outgoing mails and ability to compose

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replies on behalf of their executives on any matter. This office function saves the executive/boss

time and lifts the goodwill of the organization.

Secretary must be skillful in written communications, as he will often be called upon to draft and

edit correspondence on behalf of the organization to outside groups as well as internal members.

The secretary must therefore be fluent in the organizations jargons, and be familiar with

organizations communications style requirements.

2.4 Literature Review

Ruben, N (2012) a good writer on role of secretaries career rates his study in various
occupations, companies and other related occupation. He is of the view that for any company to
grow better, a person needs to have in the Organization or Institution well trained and well on
work performance; He values the skillfulness of a professional secretary in terms of the grade
she/he has acquired in a well professionalism. He says that the a well language in communication
the secretary is, the speeder the company will run.

Maxime.H, (2010) an author whose study on language in communication explained in terms of

the automatic ability a professional secretary achieves when doing the language communication.
He says that a professional secretary will be graded when typing his or her work, there is an
instinct time taken between reading the text and typing the same.

Another Author, John. J (2012) who writes on the role of secretaries he/she gives company
wealth. That when a secretary performing his duties, means he enhance the capacity building of
the company. The author mean that the secretary perform well when there are no limitation in his
working environment.

The authors training is so usefully to the acquired in our system of education to professional
secretaries so as to bring impact to the services to public services in particular educational

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services. If the Ilala District could obtain such a skilled professional as the author here in
suggests, then services related to typing educational writings would have been improved in both
quality and quantity, as a result minimizing running cost of the Ministry.

Good services improves public confidence to the Government, this propounded by Strong, P
(2011) who writes on usefulness of having well language in communication in any institution. It
will result to better services; hence people confidence on the Government will be improved.

Finally, as commented by John, Barnes (2010) well secretaries have an impact of speeding up
the general development of an Organization. Relating to the study at hand, the author implies that
The Education and Vocational Training in particular would acquire a high reputation if secretarial
services were well improved by hiring well trained professional secretaries with highest grade of
accuracy and well in language communication. In turn, the Governments trust worth would be
increased to the public.

2.5 Approaches for improving Secretaries p

Consistent Monitoring and Evaluation of the Supply Chain Performance Indicators

Monitoring is the routine and systematic accumulation of information against a plan. The

information might be about activities, products or services, users, or about outside factors

affecting the organization or project. Evaluation on the other hand is about utilizing monitoring

and other information you accumulate to make judgments about the value of any component part

of an organization or its projects, products, services or benefits, or about the organization

holistically. It is also about utilizing the information to make changes and ameliorations.

Organizations use monitoring and evaluation for to learn about their own activities and results,

and to fortify internal plan and development and be accountable to their stakeholders. Generally,

organizations undertake two types of monitoring activities to understand how the organization is

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performing and to identify those areas which require further attention. The two types of

monitoring activities are performance monitoring and compliance monitoring.

Performance monitoring involves an in-depth analysis of a process or project, to determine

whether it is efficient and efficacious. It involves developing criteria, conducting interviews and

examining documentation to determine how the process or project is conducted. Additionally,

Compliance monitoring and compliance auditing aim to establish whether a process or procedure

is carried out in conformance with pertinent external requisites, whether set through legislation,

regulations or directions.

Although there exist high levels of productivity among the secretarial staff at MOE, the business

environment has become very competitive and there is no place for firms who relax on the past

glory. The secretarial staff department must constantly be made to review their system to

discover weaknesses that can quickly be addressed to meet customer satisfaction.

2.6 Continuous Staff training in the use of Modern equipments

A learning organization where the members are continually gaining knowledge and enhancing

their capabilities to aid the organization in adapting to dynamic environments and remain

competitively superior over competitors . The driving force behind such an organization is its

ability to effectively manage knowledge. The secretarial staff at MOE must constantly be trained

to become their very best. The Ministry must invest in continuous training.

2.7 Continuous Investment in Modern Office Equipment and Technologies

To maintain a strong competitive advantage and customer satisfaction, the ministry be

continually invest in the acquisition of the latest equipments that would enhance the productivity

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of its staff. For example, the study reveals a lack of video conferencing equipments, and these

must be purchased to reduce travelling and promote technological advancement at Ilala District.

CHAPTER THREE

3.0 Introduction
Research Methodology is approach through which research is undertaken. It includes research
design, sampling techniques, data collection methods and approach and sample size.

3.1 Research Design

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This study is a qualitative research design because the data collected was not easy quantifiable
and was carried out case study approach at the Ilala District.

3.2 Sample Size

The study will be carried at to twenty (20) number of respondents. The number of respondents
for the study is easy researchable and manageable to be handled. This sizeable number of
respondents will ensure the researcher will speedily results, it will ensure accuracy since no more
difficult in collecting data from the sampled respondents. Hence the study was effective.

3.3 Population Study

This is adaptability of units from which the sample is going to be drawn. The case for study for
this research study was at Ilala District. That respondent from the Ilala District was the targeted
group of respondents. The reason for the choice is because the people employed from their
conversant with the study at hand, they are aware with the topic for study. The researcher
therefore was placed in a better position on coming up with answers from the people who were
aware of the facts in questions.

3.4 Sampling Techniques

The main methods applied in collection of data were random sampling procedures and stratified
sampling techniques. The reason for the choice of these sampling techniques are to the effect that
random sampling allowed equal chances as it disallowed ambiguities to the person. Random
sampling gave equal chance of success by all respondents where as stratified sampling
techniques allowed the choice with regard to status that is whether single, married, boss or
servant, managerial or administrative capacity.

3.5 Data Collection Method

The researcher had used various ways in coming into collection of data; these enabled the
researcher to come up with different findings from the respondents. The bellow explained
methods of data collection were useful for coming up with the findings at hand.

3.5.1 Content Analysis

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Content analysis is a research technique used to make replicable and valid inferences by
interpreting and coding textual material. By systematically evaluating texts (e.g., documents, oral
communication, and graphics), qualitative data can be converted into quantitative data.

BIBLIOGRAPHIES

Eugene, M (2011), the responsibilities of the Secretary in an Organization: Studies for general
secretarial service of the office which includes protecting and handling office particulars,
Prentice Hall, London.

Gregory, I (2010), the importance of secretary in maintaining Customer Care: A study in Public
Schools, 4th ed. Oxford University, London.

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Taheem, N (2009), How secretaries can be responsible for dealing with correspondences and
other duties, Butterworth Heinemann, Boston.

Antony, F (2008), Monitoring and evaluation can be practiced by secretaries: A case study in
Northern Sweden, Business schools, Boston.

Collins, J (2009), the duty of Secretary in Western Europe, University of Wollongong,

Wollongong.

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