whatever is in front of them. Short deadline, incomplete data, no budget, a system that hasn’t been updated since 2009. The work gets done. But that resourcefulness has a shadow side. When people are good at coping, nobody notices what they are coping without. When you are brilliant at improvising, nobody sees that the scaffolding is missing entirely. The result of that gap, repeated across thousands of professionals over years, is talented people solving the same problems in isolation, over and over again. Reinventing the wheel. Quietly burning out. Leaving. And when they go, the knowledge goes with them. It doesn’t transfer. It walks out the door. Some organisations call it turnover. Sometimes it’s just exhaustion that nobody caught.
When people are good at coping, nobody notices what they are coping without. When you are brilliant at improvising, nobody sees that the scaffolding is missing entirely.
has been in the industry twenty years and quietly stopped engaging. The one who volunteers for everything, shows up constantly, and eventually burns out because the community has been taking more than it gives back. His view isn’t that people are broken. It’s that the environment shapes the behaviour. So, if we want a more engaged, more connected, more generous payroll community, we don’t fix the people. We look honestly at the environment we’ve built and whether it’s actually working for everyone in it, not just the people who were lucky enough to land somewhere with good support.
An Unlikely Lens I want to bring in a voice that’s not an obvious fit for a payroll article. Gabor Maté is a physician and author, best known for his work on trauma and addiction. Something he talks about has always stuck with me in the context of professional communities. He argues that human beings are wired for connection and belonging. When that’s absent or inconsistent, people either disengage or overcompensate by performing. Think about the payroll professional who never asks questions in an online forum because they’re afraid of looking stupid. The one who
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ISSUE 25 GLOBAL PAYROLL MAGAZINE
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