Does your workplace go with the flow: office space affects productivity, morale and customer relation.

• Author: Westby, Tim
• Position: Office Environment

Walking into Celtic Bank for the first time can be disorienting. Instead of seeing a line of customers waiting for the next available teller like at most banks, a friendly receptionist greets incoming customers with a "Can I help you?"

It's enough to make a person wonder if they're in the right place. But after a minute to catch your bearings, you'll realize you're in a pleasant space with an open floor plan surrounded by lots of glass, natural wood and modem art deco-ish furniture. Off to the left are two small conference rooms; on the right is a larger conference room walled off by glass. By then the obvious should start to sink in: This isn't your normal bank.

Two years ago, Celtic opened its doors in Salt Lake City with the intention of carving out a niche in Utah's fiercely competitive banking industry by focusing its operations on the real estate and small business communities. To Celtic's executive vice president, Reese Howell Jr., the nontraditional business plan called for a nontraditional layout. "We don't really target everything" like most banks, says Howell. "And we felt our clients would want more personal service instead of standing in a teller line."

Besides teller lines, Howell wanted to avoid the wide-open loan departments of most banks, "Where God and everyone can hear your discussions," he says. So at Celtic, customers meet with loan officers either in one of the front conference rooms or in the officer's private office.

Howell, who did most of the layout and design himself, asked the same question many managers and company executives are beginning to ask: What is the best way to create a workspace that is conducive to productive and satisfied workers and creates an image in line with the company's business plan?

In these days of flattening corporate hierarchies, the emphasis to work as a team, and technology like laptops, the Internet, cell phones and e-mail that can put the workplace anywhere, the old icons of office layout--the steel filing cabinet, the large conference table and canyons of gray-colored cubicles surrounded by the offices of managers and company executives--are becoming outmoded.

Companies are increasingly creating cubicle pods where every worker might have a view out a window or where workstations can be easily rearranged to accommodate a change in workflow The size of common areas where workers can interact and work together is increasing, while executive offices are shrinking.

Large office furniture...