A key factor in how well employees perform is motivation. Organizations are concerned with the motivation of their employees, but they are not always aware of what motivates an individual. Job performance and motivation are intimately linked, and a person's level of motivation will have an impact on their level of performance, both positively and negatively. Thus, the goal of this article is to conduct a systematic literature review of the relationship between motivation and job performance among public sector employees. After searching the databases Web of Science, Scopus, and Google scholar, 46 articles were selected. The findings revealed a favourable and statistically significant association between motivation and job performance, as well as motivation's role as a mediator and moderator. The discovery adds to the limited prior research on this collaborative interaction.