One of the most destructive impacts of the COVID fiasco is that it has permanently damaged the three-way relationship between workers, businesses, and government. The damage this has done to self-motivation and personal ambition is never going to be fixed.
Lecturing people will never get people to work harder.
Incentives are the best way to do that—and that is a management issue—identify the incentives that work best for individual employees.
For some employees it may be money, for others a hope for promotion, others want a fancy office, others a fancy title, others want social validation (awards), others want to be left alone and given a lot of “running room” etc. Everyone is different.
Good managers know how to handle the complexity—bad managers have no clue.