3/6/2026 (Updated: 5/28/2026) - by Maddi Shuler - Commercial Banking
When it comes to payroll, the stakes are always high. With 67% of Americans living paycheck-to-paycheck, payroll means food on the table, a mortgage paid on time, gas in the tank, and soccer cleats that have to fit by Saturday.
When payroll works, life moves forward; and when it doesn’t, everything stops. That’s the reality the payroll industry lives in every single day.
Behind every paycheck is a business owner, a payroll professional, and a network of people carrying enormous responsibility. We sat down with leaders of three different payroll companies, Austin Fish, Lori Winters, and Robin Imbrogno, and while they each said it differently, they all meant the same thing: this work is personal.
Austin Fish, CEO at Complete Payroll, has spent his entire career in this industry. Complete Payroll is a family business his father started in 1992, and Austin, along with his brother, took over the company more than 15 years ago. At its core, he describes their work as helping companies pay their people, but anyone who’s ever touched payroll knows it’s not that easy.
There are hours to calculate, rates to confirm, taxes to file, garnishments to manage, tight deadlines, and risks that most employees never see. One error isn’t just an inconvenience, it can mean hundreds or thousands of people not getting paid.
In Austin’s office, they have a phrase for it: company killers. ”One bounced payroll can change everything,” he says. That’s the reality payroll professionals live with, and it’s why Austin takes his work so seriously. Not because it’s technical, but because it’s human.
For Lori Winters, Founder and CEO at Thread, payroll and trust go hand-in-hand.
She built her business over two decades, growing from focusing on small businesses to the middle market. Along the way, she learned quickly that when payroll fails, nothing else matters. ”If files don’t go out, people don’t get paid,” she says. ”No shiny interest rate or pricing incentive can fix that.”
When you ask her what she’s most proud of, it isn’t the scale of her business or the software they use, but her team and the culture they’ve built around the service they provide. She wants her employees to sleep at night and for her clients to trust her, and she knows that trust only exists when the people behind the scenes care just as much as she does.
In her world, payroll is deeply emotional. When something goes wrong, even briefly, people feel it immediately; anxiety spikes, phones ring, and reputations are on the line.
What she values most is knowing there’s always someone on the other end who understands the urgency she’s facing. Someone who treats payroll the way she does: not as a task, but as a responsibility.
Robin Imbrogno, President, CEO and Founder at HR Consulting Group, has been in this industry for decades. She describes payroll as a ”delicate” business, and she means that emotionally as much as operationally. There were years when she personally checked emails every night, watched files close, and made sure nothing slipped through the cracks. Not because she didn’t trust her team, but because the weight of payroll followed her home.
When payroll works, no one notices. When it doesn’t, families feel it immediately.
Over time, Robin learned what real partnership looks like. Not vendors or ticket systems, but partners. Partners who answer the phone on holidays, who call before a problem becomes a crisis, and who understand that in payroll, there’s no such thing as ”we’ll fix it tomorrow.” ”I can live my life now because I know payroll will be done right,” she says.
Austin, Lori, and Robin run different businesses that serve different markets, and they’ve each faced different challenges; but they all share the common mindset that payroll is about protecting people.
When you’re the person responsible for payroll, you know that every file means someone is waiting; so, if it’s late, wrong, or doesn’t go through, real people will feel it immediately. Payroll professionals do work almost no one sees, but everyone relies on. When payroll works, nothing stops. Life keeps moving forward, and that’s because someone cared enough to make sure it did.
Somewhere in the background of all this is a banking partner that understands the weight payroll carries. The leaders we spoke with emphasized the importance of the same things: access to real people, deep industry understanding, proactive communication, and trust that can only be built over time. They described a team that truly knows their business – not just their account number.
In an industry many banks see as ”too risky,” SouthState shows up consistently. When payroll professionals feel supported, they can do what they do best: protect the people counting on them.
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