The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of job stress on the performance of workers of hospitals in East Jakarta mediated by motivation underpinned by inverted-U theory. The methodology used in this study is by utilizing a questionnaire distributed to hospital staffs in East Jakarta. By using 280 workers who had filled out the questionnaire completely, the validity was tested with factor analysis and internal consistency with Cronbach Alpha. The results of testing the two models using structural equation modeling (SEM) found that motivation affected job stress and performance differently. Job stress was unrelated and had no direct effect on performance. The second model showed that motivation especially extrinsic motivation mediated the relationship between job stress and performance. An in-depth discussion of the results of this study is discussed at the end of this article. This study used a self-assessment that has the risk of causing common method variance and used cross-sectional data that can interfere with testing the mediation model. The practical implication of this study found that during the pandemic, the extrinsic motivation that drives the nurses to work hard is the environmental conditions, namely the patients who need help. Recruitment of nurse volunteers, socialization about COVID-19 and how to handle and prevent it need to be massively given to reduce the job stress of nurses. The novelty of this study is that the research was conducted during a pandemic with a very high addition of confirmed cases of COVID-19. The results of this study contribute to enriching knowledge about human resource management, especially regarding stress and employee motivation in times of crisis