Employee satisfaction and service delivery at court of appeal in Uganda

Abstract

Courts are mandated to deliver justice with speed, efficiency and at minimum costs as “justice delayed is justice denied” however in practice this has proved otherwise. There are increasing backlog cases in courts in Uganda depicting poor Judicial Service Delivery. This study set out to investigate the relationship between Employee Satisfaction and Service Delivery at the Court of Appeal in Kampala. The study was quantitative in nature. A cross section correlational survey research design was adopted. The population of the study was 85 giving a sample of 70 using Morgan and Krejcie table (1970). The population of the study consisted of Justices, Registrars, Magistrates and support staff (Court interpreters, clerks, process servers, office supervisors, registry attendants, research assistants and record officers). Simple random sampling was used to select the respondents. A five-point Likert- scale survey questionnaire was used to collect the data. Data collection instruments used included questionnaires and document analysis. Data was analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 23. The results from the analysis show that there is a positive relationship between work load, reward system, working conditions and service delivery. The results also show that Employee Satisfaction significantly influence service delivery at the Court of Appeal. From the above we can conclude that there is a significant positive relationship between employee satisfaction and service delivery. Therefore, government should frequently conduct surveys to ascertain employee expectation on key issues including their current jobs and work environment and should also adequately reward the employees for their work in order to improve quality of service delivered at Court. Keywords: Employee Satisfaction; Service Delivery, Court of Appeal- Uganda.