CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1     GENERAL PERSPECTIVE

          According to Oxford Advance Learners Dictionary, “environment is defined as the natural conditions in which people, animals and plants lives”.  Environment can also be defined as “all the surrounding things, conditions, and influences affecting the growth or development of living things”.  It is the act or fact of surrounding in other words, environment means the surrounding in which living things live.  Therefore, environment for the purpose of this research refers to the office environment.  This type of environment gives secretaries good  working relationship and enhance high productivity.

          The secretary’s environment can be divided into two:

1.                 Immediate environment

2.                 Remote environment

-                     Immediate environment:  refers to the secretary’s very office and other offices, of the same organization

-                     The Remote environment:  means the outside environment of the secretary’s office or building that has a negative effect such as, ventilation, noise, temperature, over crowding, cleanliness, lighting, attitude of office colleagues etc.  It is therefore, a prime importance for employers to make environment as conducive as possible for the secretary’s higher productivity which is ultimate goal of any employer.  Creating selection, arrangement, and use of sample physical surrounding chairs, tables, storage, lighting, decorating and other physical element that comprises your personal office are mans of enhancing competences as well as the image of an organization.

In the light of above this research will focuses on the effects of environment on secretary’s productivity, it will look at some of the areas like poor ventilation, lighting, cleanliness, internal noise, heating all these are factors that can affect the productivity of working secretary in an office environment.

1.2     STATEMENT OF PROBLEMS

          To determine the extend which the environment factors such as noise, ventilation, lack of enough space in the office and equipment can hinder the performance of secretary in an organization.

1.3     OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY

I.       To find out and ascertain the effect of environment condition to the working secretary in an organization.

II.      To encourage the organization to acquire more office automation for effectives efficiency of secretary

III.     To provide organization with mores ideas for a conducive environment for the workers

1.4     RESEARCHER QUESTIONS

i.        Does lack of constant power supply in an office affect the performance of a secretary?

ii.       Does too much noise in an office affect the secretary’s productivity?

iii.      Does an office which is not clean and tidy, brings about low productivity?

iv.      Do stuffy environment causes drowsiness, which in turn produces less accurate work?

1.5     LIMITATION

          The research work is limited to the case study that is the Federal Polytechnic Kaura Namoda.

1.6     DELIMITATION

The study therefore, will highly be concentrated on factors that affect performance of secretaries in the Federal Polytechnic Kaura Namoda

1.7     SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

          The research is to identify the importance of office environment, know the effect of environmental condition in the life of working secretary, and also to fulfill the following:

-                     To serve as a criteria or form of reference to secretaries in an organization

-                     To aid students who may wish to conduct research on project that relates to this topic.