DIGITAL SKILLS REQUIRED OF OFFICE TECHNOLOGY AND MANAGEMENT GRADUATES FOR GLOBAL RELEVANCE AND DECENT WORK IN CIVIL SERVICE IN BORNO STATE

Abstract

The study was conducted to ascertain the digital office skills required of office technology and management graduates for global relevance and decent work in civil service in Borno state.  A survey research design was used for the study. Two research questions were used and two null hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance.  The population of the study comprised of 137 state directors in Borno state ministries and 103 Federal directors in the Federal ministries who work with OTM graduates in their offices, totaling 240 correspondences. The entire population was used as sample for the study because of its manageable size.  A self-structured questionnaire titled Digital Office Skills Required by OTM Graduates Questionnaire (DOSROTMGQ) was developed by the researcher and carefully validated by two experts and was also subjected to internal consistency testing using Cronbach Alpha, and the reliability coefficient obtained was 0.86.  The instrument consists of 53 items seeking information on the digital office skills required of OTM graduates for decent work performance and challenges faced by OTM graduates in digital office. Mean and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions while Independent simple t-test was used to test the null hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance.  The results of the study showed that for OTM graduates to remain relevant and have a decent work performance in a digital office, there is need for OTM graduates to be adequately equipped with relevant skills in mastery of word-processing packages/software, electronic spreadsheet skills, power--point presentation skill, desktop publishing skills, ability to create and organize computer files and folders, ability to use storage amongst others. However, certain factors like insufficient fund allocation, poor lecturers’ qualities, absence of laboratories, lack of computers laboratory, lack of computer systems (desktop and lap-top, word-processing machines, lack of internet facilities, mode of teaching aids by lecturers, lack of media facilities, shortage of electricity supply. stand as challenges faced by OTM graduates from decent work performance in the 21^st century digital office. It is therefore imperative that efforts are put in place by the stakeholders to mitigate these challenges.  It was recommended amongst others that curriculum planners should recognize and appreciate the trend in technology and to examine local, global and inter—cultural issues that may be of benefit to training students in order to accommodate the required digital office skills identified in this study in the curriculum for training office Technology and Management students.  This will enhance skill acquisition of students for decent work performance in digital office.

Keywords:  Digital Office Skills, Office Technology And Management (OTM), Graduates, Decent Work,