It’s surprising the range of queries people have for their payroll analytics, from the simple: “what is our consolidated global headcount at a single point in time?” to the more complex: “what would be the impact of a change in our vacation carryover policy to our balance sheet accruals?”.

So what have we learnt from 2020, a year that was like no other, that we can take into 2021, a year that will be unlike anything we are expecting?

Aside from learning to play piano accordion through the lockdown (learning that’s been - ahem - delighting the rest of my household bubble), the biggest lesson for me has been about resilience. Not just the resilience of the payroll profession, but of the whole community – the vendors, the professional bodies and support groups, and the agencies they work with.

It’s not every day you switch on the radio to hear a shout going out to the payroll community. But along with care workers, emergency services and grocery store staff, payrollers have been getting some love recently as they look after employees during global lockdowns. As well as job retention and part-time working schemes to register for, there are changes in sick pay arrangements, rules around temporary closures and lay-offs, new social insurance schemes and reduced or waived tax and social security contributions or extended deadlines for payment.

What does behavioral psychology have to do with multi-country payroll? Or to put it another way, if governments can bring about subtle changes in people’s behavior by playing to their subconscious proclivity to do the right thing, can payroll use the same techniques to reduce errors and workloads?

Influential voices may be calling for the abolition of the term “Eastern Europe”, arguing that the region is now so integrated with the rest of Europe that it’s a historical anomaly, but it still sometimes seems easier to point to the differences between East and West than the similarities. And that applies as much to international payroll as anything else.