Work–Life balance, motivation, and environment as determinants of civil servant performance in North Sumatra Indonesia

Indonesian bureaucratic reform has made the individual performance of civil servants a central policy concern, yet empirical evidence on which work-related resources actually move performance in small district-level agencies remains thin. This study examines the partial and simultaneous effects of work–life balance, work motivation, and the work environment on employee performance at the Fisheries Agency of Asahan Regency, North Sumatra. A quantitative, cross-sectional survey was administered to the entire population of 32 civil servants using saturated sampling, and the data were analysed with multiple linear regression in SPSS 24 after establishing instrument validity, internal consistency, and compliance with the classical linear model assumptions. The estimated model was statistically significant, F (3, 28) = 6.02, p = .003, and explained 39.2% of the variance in performance (adjusted R ² = .327). Work–life balance was the only significant unique predictor, B = 0.378, SE = 0.123, β = .507, t (28) = 3.07, p = .005, uniquely accounting for approximately 20.5% of performance variance. Neither work motivation, p = .534, nor the work environment, p = .318, contributed significantly once work–life balance was controlled. The findings position work–life balance as a personal resource that survives statistical competition with two variables that dominate Indonesian human resource management research, and suggest that in a small, tenured, rule-governed public office, motivation and physical work conditions operate as hygiene conditions rather than as drivers that differentiate performance. Implications for flexible-work policy and workload design in local government are discussed.