Organisational justice has become prominent within the leadership literature as an underlying and important aspect of governance. This study set out to examine factors influencing employees organisational justice perceptions in a South African government department. The perceptions of the 289 participants were investigated by using the Organisational Justice Measurement Instrument (OJMI) as a measure of organisational justice. Descriptive statistics of the sample and factor analysis were conducted to analyse the data and to determine the factors that contributed to the perceptions of organisational justice of government employees. Results of the Cronbach alpha indicated that the OJMI is a reliable measuring instrument for the construct of organisational justice. The findings of this study identified the nine underlying factors that contributed to the perceptions of organisational justice as strategic direction, distributive, procedural, interactional, informational, service delivery and innovation, diversity management, customer relations, ethical leadership and management. This study suggests that to enhance the perceptions of organisational justice, leaders in government departments should focus on the identified nine factors. The implications of the findings are discussed and recommendations for future research are made.