There is a notion that people work hard only because they want to make more money. While this statement can be true to some extent, I believe there are other factors behind this working ethic of people.
Money can be considered number one motivation for people to work hard as it has a profound role in our life. In order to live a good life, people need to earn a lot of money as every basic need for human survival and development, such as education, food, housing and medical care costs a significant amount of money. This can be a strong reason why some might think the drive that make people make hard efforts or go the extra miles in their job is financial rewards.
I, however, argue that other reasons are equally important. People sometimes set non-financial career goals and try very hard to achieve them. For example, as an artist, someone might have a goal of organising 100 art exhibitions in different cities of the world. Doing so is very challenging and requires a lot of effort and money. However, the person might still work very hard to achieve this goal.
Another reason that is cited by many people is job satisfaction. Having job satisfaction is not straightforward and it includes many different elements, including work-life balance, consistent pay rise, healthy working environment to name a few. Some of these are dependent on the employees and may be achieved if they worked hard enough. Accomplishing all these elements is not a simple process, so people need to put in a number of efforts to achieve fulfillment in their occupation.
In conclusion, although money might be regarded as the top priority for people who work hard, I believe that they also have other reasons, such as career accomplishments and the willingness to achieve overall job satisfaction.