Before the novel coronavirus rocked the world, prompting widespread social distancing, the contingency plans some financial institutions had in place to facilitate remote work for their employees has made for a streamlining of the current workplace shift.

Virginia-based Pentagon Federal Credit Union, for one, was already more than one year into forming its contingency plan to facilitate employees to work from home by the time COVID-19 hit the U.S.

“I’ve been smiling this week because we’re on the second or third order of issues, rather than that primary issue of ‘What are we going to do.’ We are able to work out some of the minor kinks and bugs that might come up in a situation like this,” said Jamie Gayton, executive vice president of operations at PenFed.

Having spent more than 30 years leading teams in the U.S. military, Gayton said he is no stranger to “these kind of crisis situations,” adding that 18 months ago, he had prioritized the importance of having employees work from home, whether for a weather incident or natural disaster.

PenFed is not alone. Early preparation, prompted by recurring extreme weather and natural disasters, has given certain banks a head start in providing hardware and upgrading software to accommodate employees’ remote work. Now, the focus for these institutions is to keep employees linked, leaning on software-as-a-service platforms, such as Slack, Zoom and Skype, to boost connectivity.

New Orleans-based Gulf Coast Bank’s contingency plan to facilitate its employees to work remotely has also paid off. Because Gulf Coast is in the hurricane belt, “we’ve always planned for this,” said Jason Shields, the bank’s vice president and loan operations manager.

Employees at the Fishers, Ind.-based First Internet Bank also work from home regularly, due to ice storms, according to Nicole Lorch, the bank’s executive vice president and COO. The online bank, which has $4.1 billion in assets, has more than 33% of its employees working from home now, with the goal of pushing that to 50% by the end of next week, she added.

Since implementing the work from home protocols, keeping employees connected has been top of mind for financial institutions.

Also read: Banks boost VPNs to accommodate remote work 

For PenFed, that means managing the number of employees who work remotely, despite the technical capability. Currently, PenFed is able to have more than 95% of its service center agents work from home, however the credit union is operating on a rotating basis of 70% working from home and 30% on-site to “share the responsibility” of commuting to and from the office, Gayton added. “I don’t think it’ll get to [100%] and I don’t think that’s necessary, there’s some value in having some folks come into the office and have that camaraderie of a close-knit team.”

To that end, some teams at PenFed encourage employees to partake in theme days, Gayton said, noting Wednesday was a “dress up” day. “You can see how that creates that ‘Hey we’re still a team, we still experience the camaraderie even though we’re not sitting in our cubical area together,’ and for me those are the kinds of things that build up the team and keep them together,” he said.

At Cross River Bank, employees can meet for a virtual lunch on the bank’s tab to boost the social interaction, according to Phil Goldfeder, senior vice president of public affairs at the bank. Further, the leadership team facilitates “town hall” style meetings via video conference, so employees can speak openly about life at home and how people work together with their families.

“The key is projecting common confidence onto your team and communicating, communicating, communicating ,” Gayton said.