<![CDATA[This study examines the effect of employee development on employee performance through work morale at the Teladan Barat Sub-District Office, Medan Kota District. The study is motivated by an empirical performance gap: from 2022 to 2024, work-quality and teamwork scores increased while work-discipline scores declined. A quantitative census design was used with all 32 employees as respondents. Questionnaire data were analyzed using two linear-regression equations and path analysis in IBM SPSS Statistics 25. Employee development had a positive and significant effect on work morale (b = 0.916, t = 9.355, p < 0.001) and on employee performance after controlling for work morale (b = 0.118, t = 2.312, p = 0.028). Work morale also had a positive and significant effect on employee performance (b = 1.050, t = 21.782, p < 0.001). The models explained 74.5% of the variance in work morale and 98.2% of the variance in employee performance. The indirect effect of employee development on performance through work morale was 0.9618; a Sobel test based on the reported regression coefficients and standard errors indicated that this indirect effect was statistically significant (z = 8.596, p < 0.001). The findings support work morale as an important psychological pathway through which development initiatives are associated with employee performance in a local-government office. Because the study uses a small, single-office, cross-sectional and self-reported dataset, the unusually high R² should be interpreted cautiously and verified against the original instrument and residual diagnostics before final publication.]]>
