Leave management system

LEAVE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM FOR THE BIBLE SOCIETY OF UGANDA BY KAYENY GRACE SO9B13/319 Department of Information Technology Faculty of Science and Technology.

A project Proposal Submitted to the Faculty of Science and Technology For the Study Leading to a Project in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Award of the Degree of Bachelor of  Science and Information Technology of  Uganda Christian University.

Supervisor MR.PAUL KISAMBIRA

Department of Information Technology Faculty of Science and Technology, Uganda Christian University.

October, 2011.

CHAPTER ONE 1.0 Introduction

The proposed leave management system is a single leave management and attendance system that temporally keeps leave records of all the employees of the Bible Society of Uganda. The leave management system will provide a connection between the user and the database hence enabling quick retrieval of the information without any intervention from the human resource manager. It will allow employees and their managers to manage their leaves and mark their leave dates. In addition, it will ensure that employees no longer have to chase their leave requests and the human resource does not need to follow-up with people to reconcile their absences. 1.1 Background of the study

The Bible Society of Uganda is a non government organization which translates, produces, and distributes the word of God. It is located at plot 3126 Bombo road. It was founded (24

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November 1968) with Mr. John Kyeyune as its treasurer. Currently the Bible Society of  Uganda has over 30 staff and non staff who are supposed to be given leave at the end of  every month. This system of giving leave to employees is important because the employees feel motivated. One of the most important yet difficult responsibilities of a leader in any organization is motivating staff. Well motivated employees can lead to the result of higher productivity; higher performance and it can also help to improve the work quality and profits across all the departments. According to the current system, all the employees have to fill paper forms and chase them to gain approval from the human resource manager. The major challenge here is that the human resource finds it a problem integrating request inputs from different employees and manual attendance registers across all the different departments in the organization. Therefore a significant amount of expensive employee, manager and human resource time is wasted in a very basic process of giving and attaining leave.

1.2 Problem statement

The Bible Society of Uganda has been giving leave to its employees for a while now. This is done in a way that the employee submits in a letter requesting for leave to the resource manager. The manager later decides on who to give leave basing on circumstances under which the leave is requested. However the major challenge is that there exists a difficulty in deciding who and when to give leave because you may find that more than one staff will be requesting and with genuine reasons which makes it difficult to give leave. The proposed system will help simplify the work of the Human Resource Manager in giving leave to the employees. 1.3 General objective

To come up with a system that will simplify the work of giving leave to the employees upon request by the human resource manager. 1.3.1 Specific objectives

1) To analyse the existing system in order to identify gaps and come up with a new system. 2) To design and develop a prototype for the proposed system. 3) To implement the prototype. 4) To test and validate the system. 1.4 Scope

The system will only be limited to the Bible Society of Uganda, human resource section. It will take the duration of four months, that‟s to say from December to march to be developed. The research will be carried out from the same organization that is Bible Society of Uganda. The programming language that will be used is PHP with SQL server database management system.

1.5 Significance

This system will increase data integrity in that only right person goes for the leave at the time that is allocated for him/her. It will offer better way of giving leave to the employees in that leave will be given to one employee at a time. It will be able to keep records of a particular employee who is on leave in order to avoid confusion of not knowing the particular employee who is on leave and for what reasons. This system will eliminate paperwork and reduce delay by enabling employees and supervisors to stop applications simply by entering the dates and type of leave being sought after the employee has received his or her entitlements.

CHAPTER TWO 2.0 Literature Review 2.1 Introduction

Most of the organizations today give out leave to their various employees and the Bible Society of Uganda is no exception. This involve certain time that the employee have privilege to time of such as public holiday ,annual leave that have been approve by the employers. The current leave offer is done in a way that Employees have to fill paper forms and chase them up with approving from the human resource manager. This existing system has a number of  disadvantages, the designed automated leave management system will overcome these challenges. This chapter talks about the reviewed literature in the field of the project, the current system, the proposed system and the related system.

2.2 Current System

Employee leave management is basic human resource task and one that affects all employees. Most companies have well defined leave policies that are conveyed to employees and managers through employee handbooks or human resource policy manuals. Yet the human resource is saddled with administrative management of leave, updating of leave balances and responding to queries on balances and entitlements from employees and their managers. Employees too find it a bother to have to fill paper forms and chase them up with approving managers. A significant amount of expensive employee, manager and human resource time is wasted in a very basic process of giving and attaining leave. Leave offers is a basic human resource process affecting everyone and critical as a basic input to payroll processing. Human resource faces problems of integrating request inputs from different employees and manual attendance registers across all business locations. Each month a lot of human resource time is spent collecting and reconciling attendance data before payroll can be correctly processed. Integrating leave data is essential but not always easy. According to Staren (2011) the job of a manager in the workplace is to get things done through employees. For doing this managers should be able to motivate the employees. One of the most important yet difficult responsibilities of a leader in any organization is motivating staff (Staren, 2009, pp.74-77). Well motivated employees can lead to the result of 

higher productivity; higher performance and it can also help to improve the work quality and profits across all the departments. There are many theorists have complied their own conclusions and consequently a wide variety of motivational theory has been produced. Herzberg‟s Motivation-Hygiene Theory is one of the content theories of motivation. This theory is used for better understands about the employees‟ working relationship, attitudes, and

performance.

Herzberg‟s Motivation-Hygiene Theory attempts to explain the factors that motivate employees by identifying and satisfying their individual needs, desires and the aims pursued to satisfy those desires. According to Herzberg, there are two factors that cause motivation and demotivation in an organization (Halepota, 2009, pp.14-18). He called those factors which enhanced job satisfaction as the motivators and those factors which caused job dissatisfaction as the hygiene factors. What makes employees satisfied at work refers to the factors that related to the content of their jobs. On the other hand, what makes employees unhappy at work is not what they do but how well or poorly they are treated. These treatment factors are related not to the content of work, but to the context of the job. These challenges also exist in the current system in that when an employee is not treated well or motivated, there will probably be a decline in the performance of the employee leading to low productivity. Luthans (2008, pp. 262-265) states that „good feelings were generally associated with job experiences and job content‟. Potential for achievement, receiving recognition, the work  itself, being giving responsibility, the potential for advancement and the potential for growth are the factors that found to affect job. Currently, the Bible Society of Uganda gives leave to its employees depending on the request submitted to the human resource. The manager later decides on who to give leave basing on circumstances under which the leave is requested. However the major challenge is that there is a difficulty in deciding who and when to give leave because you may find that more than one staff will be requesting for leave and the one left out will remain un happy and dissatisfied since his/her request is not granted.

2.3 The Proposed Leave management System

The proposed leave management system is a single leave management and attendance system that temporally keeps leave records of all the employees of the Bible Society of Uganda. The leave management system will provide a connection between the user and the database hence enabling quick retrieval of the information without any intervention from the human resource manager. It will allow employees and their managers to manage their leaves and mark their leave dates. In addition, it will ensure that employees no longer have to chase their leave requests and the human resource does not need to follow-up with people to reconcile their absences. 2.4 Case Studies

According to Workteach in their website, leave time is a comprehensive and flexible leave management system enabling us to enter and manage leave requests according to company rules. Mantract Pty Ltd is one of Software Company that develops Leave Management System. Base on their experience, this time of the year, many employers face a formidable task of juggling and approving leaves applications. Employer need to ensure they are keeping staff happy but retaining the right workforce to do the job for themselves and customers over Christmas-New Year, traditionally a time with

high priorities on maintenance and preparations for the year ahead. This company develop outsourced automated payroll and leave management systems which offers an on-line leave management system designed to radically simplify leave for employees and employers alike the process of planning, applying for and approving leave. This system eliminates paperwork and cuts delay by enabling employees and supervisors to action time-off applications simply by entering the dates and type of leave being sought after the employee has received his or her entitlements online. Managers can in turn view the applications on a graphical leave planner where they can see the overall pattern of leave applications and personnel availability, helping them to make prompt informed decisions on approvals and staffing levels. Employees used a personal ID code to get immediate access to their entitlements, while managers can at a glance see all employees' leave history, leave balances, pending leave applications, authorizations, authorizations awaited and statutory holidays. The benefit of the system is saves time by eliminating paperwork, enhances employee satisfaction by speeding up the process and helps managers by ensuring

compliance with company policies. Their system is a web-based, there is no software to install or support and no additional hardware required to operate the system.

CHAPTER THREE

Methodology 3.0 Introduction

The methodology will be prototype model of system development life cycle which iterative and will involve the following stages of system analysis, system design, implementation/development, testing and validation. In the analysis phase, existing system will be evaluated. Problems with the current system will be identified. This will be done by interviewing users of the system and consulting with human resource. The new system requirements are defined. In particular, t he deficiencies in the existing system must be addressed with specific proposals for improvement. The proposed system will be design ed with the help of DFD‟s and ERD‟s in order to identify the relationship between the different entities in the system. The new system will be implemented using tools such as flow charts, data flow diagrams, and design manipulation languages such as PHP to design the user interface and enable connection to the database and SQL to design the relational tables in the database. When the new system is up it will be tested and validated in order to find out whether it is doing what it was meant for. Maintenance will be kept up rigorously at all times. Users of the system will be kept up-to-date concerning the latest modifications and procedures. 3.1 Requirements gathering

To determine the user requirements, the technique that will be used is interview where by the human resource manager will be interviewed in order to understand how the current system operates. This will also help us to know the current problems associated with the system. I have chosen this method because it will provide first hand information from the respondent. Questionnaires This is where the answers to the question of how current works and the problems associated with it are to be given by the respondents in a written form. This is a convenient method of  data collection because the respondent will be able to express him/herself since there will no fear of disclosing the identity. 3.2 System design

The system design will include three phases of conceptual, logical and physical design and the design techniques that will be used in this system: DFDs and ERDs The DFDs will be used at the conceptual level of the design phase because it will show how data is entered by the users, processed by the system, stored and the retrieved. The ERD will be used to identify the relationship between the different entities in the system. 3.2.1 Backend

Sql server will be used for the database because it is very fast, robust and its relational DBMS enables the human resource manager to efficiently store, sort, search and retrieve leave and attendance data. 3.2.2 Front-end

PHP will be used to design the user interface and enable connection to the database. 3.3 System implementation

I will use design manipulation languages such as PHP to design the user interface and enable connection to the database and SQL to design the relational tables in the database. 3.4 Testing and validation

Testing will be done by entering sample data in the system and then view how it will work  for example entering employee detail and then send to see if the data will be submitted to the database. Validation will be done by entering data whose results are known and then view the corresponding results or the error messages.

APPENDICES

This chapter covers the general budget and work plan for the project.

 The Project Work Plan Schedule (2011/2012) Phase

Description

Duration

Period

1

Topic identification

1 week

21 -25 Sept

2

Concept paper

1 week

4 -12

3

Prepare a draft

1 week

15th -20th Oct

st

th

Deliverable

th

th

Oct

Approved Topic

Approved concept paper

Corrected proposal draft

Proposal st

th

4

Make corrections on the draft

1 week

21 -28 Oct

5

System Planning

1 week

31 -5 Nov

6

Requirements collection and analysis

1 week

7 -14 Nov

7

Database design and DBMS selection

4 weeks

10 -27 Nov

8

Application Design

1 month

Jan 2011

User interface designing

9

Prototyping

1 month

Feb 2011

Testing the designed prototype

10

Project Presentation

1 day

March

Presenting the system to the panel

Proposed project budget

st

th

Approved Project proposal

th

Revised aims and objectives of  the project

th

Use of different data collection techniques to know more about the existing system Logical design and physical database design (use of DFD‟s and ERD‟s)

th

th

Item

Unit Cost

2 Computers

@ 1,200,000/=

 Transport

80,000/=

communication

70,000/=

Stationary 

2000/=

Pens

Total

2,400,000/= 150,000/=

12000/=

500/=

Pencils

7500/=

Ruled papers

2000/=

Maker pens Compact disks Flash disks

1400/=

36400/=

4gb @35000/=

Photocopying

3000/=

3000/=

Miscellaneous

30,000/=

30,000/=

Grand total

REFERENCES

2,631,400/=

Herzberg, F. (1987), “One more time: how do you motivate employees?”, Harvard Business Review, Vol. 65 No. 5, pp. 109-20 (including a retrospective commentary (originally published in 1968)). Luthans, F. (2004), “What should we do about motivation theory? Six recommendations for the twenty-first century”, Academy of Management Review, Vol. 29 No. 3, pp. 388-403. Staren, E. (2009). Optimizing staff motivation. Physician Executive, 35 (4), 7477. Retrieved February 22, 2010, from EBSCO Online Database Business SourceComplete.http://search.ebscohost.com/  login.aspx?direct=true&db=bth&AN=43883800&s ite=ehost-live

Halepota, H. A. (2005) „Motivational Theories and Their Application in Construction‟, Cost Engineering, 47(3) pp 14-18. Luthans, F. (1992). Organisational behavior. (6th ed.). New York: McGrawHill. Luthans, F. (1998). Organisational behavior. (8th ed.). India: McGraw-Hill