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.