Effect of Office Environment on the Moral and Productivity of Secretarial Personnel in Business Organisations ( Case Study of Pz and Cadbury Plc)
Chapter One
Objectives of the Study
Work surroundings include all the features that perform and respond to the mind and physical appearance of a worker. Broadly speaking, this study seeks to assess how can be effectively used to promote secretaries performance in the Pz and Cadbury plc. Precisely, the study seeks to attain the following objectives:
- To examine the work environment of secretaries.
- To assess the productivity of workers of secretaries
- To determine the effect of work environment on productivity and morale of secretaries.
CHAPTER TWO
OVERVIEW OF THE LITERATURE
A work environment can be identified as the place that one works, which means the milieus around a person. It is the social and professional environment in which a person is supposed to interact with a number of people. Hay Group (2007) contends that work environment includes a friendly, well-designed, safe physical space, good equipment and effective communication, which will improve productivity. Well-designed and organized offices and work areas make significant differences to how people feel about their work. Working environment can give some depressing messages about how much the organization value secretariesand the standards it expects from them (Armstrong & Murlis, 2007).
A satisfied, happy and hardworking secretary is biggest asset of any organisation. Effective work environment encourage the happier secretary with their job that ultimately influence the growth of an organisation as well as growth of an economic. Lambert et al. (2001) found that environmental factors are important determinant of job satisfaction. The level of salary, promotion, appraisal system, climate management, and relation with co-workers are the very important factors. Creating better and higher performing workplace requires an awareness of how workplace impacts behaviour and how behaviour itself drives workplace performance (Armstrong & Murlis, 2007). People work individually and interact with others and this requires different workplace solutions (Chandrasekar, 2011).
Today’s work environment is different, diverse and constantly changing. The combination of factors has created an environment where the business needs its workers more than the workers need the business. For instance, It is the quality of the secretary’s work environment that most impacts on the level of secretary’s motivation and subsequent performance. In today’s competitive business environment, organizations can no longer afford to waste the potential of their workforce (Hughes, 2007). Therefore, most government organisations are making all possible efforts to make work environment more comfortable, safe and healthy. The workplace environment impacts morale, productivity and engagement – both positively and negatively. Comfortable office design motivates the secretaries and increases their performance to a large extent.
According to Abdulla et al. (2010), environmental factors represent the immediate job environment that contains skills required to perform a job, authority, autonomy, relationship with supervisors and co-workers and other working conditions. It is important for the employer to know how its work environment impacts greatly on the secretary’s level of motivation and performance. A well designed office signals the values and objectives of the organisation and the use of design in office interior communicates an organisation values and identity. Office design therefore should be one of the factors in affecting secretary’s productivity. It’s therefore important to find out if secretary’s health can directly or indirectly disturb their work performance or productivity. So it is necessary to study the impact of the work environment in an organization on the performance of its secretarys. Brill (1992) estimates that improvements in the physical design of the workplace may result in a 5-10 percent increase in secretary productivity.
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