At present, community health service personnel in China are facing many practical problems, which seriously affect their work enthusiasm and motivation. At the same time, the research on the relationship between work motivation and work performance of community health service personnel is still in its infancy, and there is no systematic research.

To identify potential subgroups of job performance among community health service personnel using a person-centered approach and to examine the predictive effect of work motivation on different job performance subgroups.

This study was conducted from July to September 2023, surveying 50 randomly selected community health centers or service stations in Heilongjiang, Hubei, Gansu, and Guangdong provinces. Within each community service center or station, 20 staff members were randomly selected to complete work motivation and work performance scales. A total of 4 000 staff members were surveyed, with 3 925 questionnaires returned and 3 854 valid questionnaires, resulting in an effective response rate of 98.2%. Latent profile analysis was used to determine the latent classification of community health service personnel's work performance. Multivariate linear regression analysis was employed to assess the relationship between different work performance subcategories and work motivation, while controlling for demographic variables such as gender and age.

The latent profile analysis (LPA) identified three distinct classes of job performance among community health service personnel, namely low, moderate, and high job performance groups, accounting for 14.71%, 46.16%, and 39.13% of the sample, respectively. The three-class model demonstrated good classification quality, with average posterior probabilities ranging from 93.8% to 96.6% across classes. Significant differences were observed among the three performance classes in task performance, contextual (relational) performance, and learning performance scores (all P<0.001). The low-, moderate-, and high-performance groups also differed significantly with respect to age, marital status, educational attainment, years of work experience, professional title, employment status, and average monthly income (all P<0.001). Multiple linear regression analyses indicated that, after controlling for relevant demographic characteristics, work motivation was a significant positive predictor of job performance in the low-, moderate-, and high-performance groups (β=0.264, 0.207, and 0.340, respectively; all P<0.001).

The work motivation of community health service personnel is effectively improved through corresponding incentive measures, which will directly promote the improvement and improvement of their work performance.