Mike Fisher joined PayCaptain early in our journey and is one of the first people that prospective clients meet when they contact us. Read on to learn more about Mike and what makes him tick!
What are your responsibilities?
My role is all about spreading the joy of PayCaptain! I work with our clients and support them through the business-change process as they implement PayCaptain across their organisation.
Quite often I’m the first person a new client will meet from PayCaptain, so I have the pleasure of demonstrating our solution and employee features to customers for the first time.
I work very closely with my colleagues throughout the business to enhance our marketing, newsletters and product development. I also engage in strategic partnership discussions with third-party solution providers, focusing on a ‘Best-in-Class’ experience for all of our clients. So, I’m busy and I love it!
How many clients do you work with in at any one time?
I currently have about 30 companies that I’m working with.They’re all at different stages of the journey and this works really well because we only onboard a handful of customers every month.
Relationship-building and dedicated support is incredibly important to us as a team. We made the decision about how we onboard customers because it gives us the opportunity to really focus on those customers to make sure the transition to PayCaptain is extremely well supported, easy and efficient.
When did you join PayCaptain?
I joined in December 2020. I was employee number three!
What attracted you to join the company?
It just felt like it was meant to be. From a personal and career perspective, I was ready for the step. I’d experienced the workplace culture of start-ups and enterprise companies and I knew PayCaptain would be a perfect fit.
PayCaptain is a caring, compassionate business, looking to make a real change in people’s lives with an incredibly innovative payroll solution. It was a dream for me and was totally opposite to the stereotypical perceptions surrounding payroll and people technology.
I’d already been working remotely through 2020. When I joined PayCaptain, I had the opportunity to continue with this – which is great for my personal life and continues to give me a great balance. When I joined, we were expecting our baby boy; planning a wedding; selling and buying a house and getting a puppy, all in the following 12 months!
To work from home and have all that time I used to spend endlessly commuting has allowed me to further my personal life and have the opportunity to see my ‘little man’ growing up – more than most fathers ever get.
How is PayCaptain different from other companies you’ve worked for?
PayCaptain offers a unique product that is a ‘force for good’. It’s a solution that cares for employees’ financial well-being and administration efficiencies.
I’ve never worked for a company with the purist of hearts, like PayCaptain has! We’re like a family, with a flexible ‘remote first’ business, meaning all PayCaptain team members work from home, during the hours that suit them.
We frequently choose to meet up in person and get together on our ‘Quarterly Retreats.’ We also talk daily, over video call and we’re in constant contact with one-another via Slack.
We’re exceptionally inter-departmentally engaged, it’s unreal! Everyone is always keen to know what’s going on across the business and genuinely cares for our product and brand. To top it off, the PayCaptain solution truly is something that can have such a positive impact on peoples’ lives and it’s a product all of us believe in passionately.
What do you enjoy most about your job?
This always sounds cheesy, but I just love knowing I’m helping businesses become more efficient and compliant.
This gives businesses the opportunity to save time and money and gain better insight into their workforce – all this while improving the financial well-being and resilience of their employees.
It doesn’t come as a shock to me any more when I hear how so many established and large companies manage their payroll so poorly - using archaic methods that’s both unproductive and a real risk to the accuracy of their employee’s pay. To transform that with PayCaptain is such a great feeling!
Once the customer has decided to move to PayCaptain, they work closely with Sarah Rayment - our Operations Manager - and a dedicated Payroll Manager. Sarah and the new business team configure PayCaptain to meet the customer’s business needs. They also provide training, support and help with internal and external communications, amongst a myriad of other activities.
It’s a very slick and effective process and means we have great success onboarding new customers. Because we only onboard a few customers every month, they get all the attention they want and need!
How does PayCaptain go the extra mile for your clients? What do you do differently?
We’re a genuine, honest and lovable bunch of people – even if I do say so myself!
Sadly, the payroll industry over the years has been tainted with pushy, uncaring and inexperienced representatives. It’s actually refreshing for our clients when they get to meet us and witness how much we consider them and how eager we are to take responsibility of all things payroll.
“The whole team share the same values; aiming high to get the best outcomes, being instinctively empathetic and just being good people, having a good time, doing a good job, for good customers.”
Who do you work closest with at PayCaptain?
As I said, we’re a tight knit team – more like a family.
I have a very close working relationship with Simon (Bocca)– as you’d expect between a CEO and Sales Manager - although he’s definitely much more of a friend to me than a “boss” in the traditional sense.
To be fair, I work closely with everyone at PayCaptain - from Sarah our Operations Manager, to Stacey our Head of Payroll. I collaborate with everyone throughout the business which is extremely important for the success of my role and that of PayCaptain.
What are your personal and professional goals within the business?
I want to make PayCaptain the UK’s favourite way to be paid – that’s both my personal and professional goal! I am so passionate, ambitious and proud to represent PayCaptain, it’s just so exciting to see how far we've come already and what the future holds.
You’re Sales & Partnerships Manager – tell us about the Partnerships side of your role and why these partnerships are beneficial for your mutual clients.
Partnerships is the formal term, really they are just great friendships with awesome people sharing a similar passion – to use tech as a force for good.
Employee data is managed in so many systems for all sorts of companies, yet historically it’s always been a pain to transfer this information between platforms. With the power of modern API integrations, both PayCaptain and our partners work very closely to ensure a seamless distribution of data, ultimately improving accuracy and saving our customers significant amounts of time and money.
What’s your background, what did you want to be when you were at school?
Well, apart from wanting to be an Astronaut when I was five, I really loved the idea of being a Police Officer! I guess I’ve always wanted to make the world a better place…
What was your first job, and for who, when you left school/University?
I went to work with my girlfriend’s (now wife’s) father in his bathroom shop. I was responsible for sales and customer service. On weekends, I worked at our local race circuit, Cadwell Park, as a Track Safety Marshall.
What’s your career history?
After working for my father-in-law, I worked for the UK’s largest holiday park company, helping customers purchase their own holiday homes or lodges.
I always had a passion for business operations and technology, and when I was head-hunted with the opportunity to step into the B2B scene, I grabbed the chance with both hands.
I joined a young tech company as Business Development Manager, to work closely with financial advisors, helping them engage with members of public that were in need of guidance. It was here I really developed a true understanding of the importance of financial security and how poor financial well-being significantly impacts one’s personal, social and working life.
I then had the opportunity to move over to a HRIS (Human Resources Information Systems) solution provider, of which payroll was a major product for the company.
After working alongside so many talented financial advisors and seeing first-hand how traditional payroll methods severely lack any financial support for employees, I met Simon Bocca, founder and CEO of PayCaptain. The timing was perfect as Simon was ready to bring PayCaptain to market… and the rest, as they say, is history!
What’s the proudest moment in your career to date?
Besides witnessing PayCaptain win the Chartered Institute of Payroll Professionals (CIPP) ‘Software Product of the Year’ award in October 2022, I’d have to say it would be the day I accepted Simon’s offer to join PayCaptain.
I’ve worked very hard in my career - building on my knowledge, learning so many skills and just being my true self. Simon gave me the sole responsibility of bringing this amazing product to market. I knew it would be a challenge, but it’s a choice I’ll never regret!
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