(Photo by Tyler Murphy)

NORWICH - NBT Bank has been able to transfer more than 1,000 employees from working in a branch to working remotely, it has also closed its doors to the public, and representatives said it has no plans of rushing to reopen in the near future.

According to NBT Bank President of Retail Community Banking Joseph Stagliano, NBT worked to make sure that it was one of the first major businesses to take the coronavirus seriously and close its doors for the safety of both employees and customers.

“There is no playbook to address a pandemic like this,” said Stagliano. “We had spent some time before all of this happened working with our Incident Response Team, and developing our ability to work remotely - working remotely pre-pandemic might have meant working in a different office, in this case it’s working from home.”

“This will forever change the way we do business, and it will forever change our lives.”

Stagliano said approximately 1,800 employees are working from home currently, making up around 90 percent of NBT’s workforce. He said the remainder of employees maintain social distancing guidelines at various NBT branches, with no unnecessary visitors entering the buildings.

He added that drive through and walk up services are still available to customers, but when the bank locations do reopen it will likely look different from what people have come to expect.

“The branch experience will look differently than it did pre-pandemic with the implementation of new measures, such as the installation of sneeze guards between tellers and customers and the continued use of personal protective equipment and enhanced cleaning protocols,” said Stagliano. “We look forward to the day when we can reopen, but we’re in no rush.”

“Protecting employees and customers is our main focus, and moving forward we’re going to continue to listen to our health officials and watch what’s happening around us.”

He said NBT’s cleaning crews are making sure to sanitize work areas using a special disinfectant that has been shown to be effective in dealing with the coronavirus.

Stagliano said that having NBT employees working from home seems to be the best way to keep them from coming into contact with the virus due to work, and the bank plans to continue in that direction until it can be sure it's safe for everyone involved.

“We’ve developed a task force that will help us determine when it would be right to have employees back in the building,” he added. “We were one of the first companies to send people home to work and to restrict access to our lobbies.”

“We anticipate that will also be one of the last to bring them back into the office and reopen our lobbies.”