How Salary Delay Impacts on Employee Performance in the Public Service: A Survey of Selected National Ministries in Juba, South Sudan

The study investigated how salary delay impacts employee performance in selected government Ministries in the Republic of South Sudan specifically, the study examined how salary delay would affect employee retention, job satisfaction, commitment, productivity, and motivation. Relevant theoretical, conceptual, and empirical reviews of literature related to the objectives of the study were evaluated revealing significant knowledge gaps in the methods and findings. A pragmatic survey research design was employed and four National Ministries in the Republic of South Sudan, namely: Labor, General Education, Health, Trade, and Industry were studied. 102 respondents were conveniently selected from a population of 1801. Closed-ended questionnaires were administered as the instrument for data collection. Descriptive, correlation, and regression analysis was done with the help of SPSS Version 21. The study found that salary delay has significant effects on employee performance. Meaning that when the frequency of salary delay increases employee performance tends to decrease leading to reduced productivity, motivation, and job satisfaction. The negative correlation coefficient of -0.54 demonstrates a moderate inverse relation between salary delay and employee performance and this can precisely be because the long period of salary delay would leave employees with no other available options other than starting side businesses such as farming and trading, and two or more extra jobs aimed at cushioning the economic shocks to manage adversity. The study recommends that the government should prioritize timely salary payment, improve communication channels regarding salary payment, establish monitoring and evaluation mechanisms, diversify the economy to improve non-oil revenue collection, suspend long-term projects, and prioritize support for export promotion and import substitution strategies. This would be a sustainable measure to stabilize the current unpredictable economy and would improve the government account balance and the subsequent balance of trade.