Business View Magazine | Volume 8, Issue 8

89 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 8, ISSUE 8 C I T I ZENS NAT IONAL BANK BLUFFTON course, when COVID arrived, plans had to be scaled back, although Faulkner is still proud of what CNB has achieved as it reached this milestone. He shares, “We expanded slowly, but surely. We have never been a bank that’s gone out and acquired any organizations. We’ve done it organically, through relationships with our local customers and markets, trying to stay as home based as we possibly can. We have expanded to nine different markets in the northwest quadrant of the State of Ohio. Right now, we are just under a billion dollars in assets, and we started back in 1920 with $50,000 in capital. So, we have come quite a long way.” Each of the bank’s 154 employees were instrumental in keeping things running during COVID – adapting to a changing way of doing business, while navigating the uncertainty. “First and foremost,” says Faulkner, “these past 18 months I’ve seen the strength and resilience of our employees, in the way they were able to battle through this pandemic, not only professionally, in helping our customers and clients, but personally too. We had to remember as we dealt with this, that our employees have their own personal lives and they were impacted as well.” As soon as the pandemic was declared by the World Health Organization, CNB created a COVID team to help organize the changing situation for the bank. Splitting staff, by having 50 percent of employees work remotely was one strategy that was used to keep everyone safe and keep things running. Faulkner admits, “There was quite a bit of scrambling from our IT team who did a tremendous job getting technology to the people that needed it, as well as our managers who really helped their employees figure out how they could continue to do their day-to-day jobs.” With the introduction of the Paycheck Protection