Citibank’s new office to spur digitization

Citibank Korea has relocated its consumer banking group to a new office in southwestern Seoul, to accelerate digitization and improve workforce efficiency, it said Monday.

The group occupies six floors from the eighth through 13th of the Young City south building in Yeongdeungpo, which have been decorated in accordance with the bank’s new workplace strategy, Citi Works, designed to best meet workers’ task-specific wants and needs.

The strategy, based on the virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), a virtualization technology that hosts a desktop operating system on a centralized server in a data center, is the first to be implemented in Korea, according to the branch of the New York-based Citigroup. “Citibank Korea has created a new office space that will help workers provide comprehensive financial services that require creative thinking and closer cooperation. We will continue our efforts to become the best customer-centric, leading digital service provider,” Citibank Korea CEO Park Jin-hei said.

Major features of the new office include unassigned seating arrangements based on which workers will choose the work space they see fit to maximize work productivity.

For example, privacy pods will help employees who need to do individual work in a quiet environment and uninterrupted surroundings.

Team tables and large benches, on the other hand, will allow workers to engage in group discussions or conversations in a more casual manner that can best encourage brainstorming.

The new space has centralized control to adjust air quality, room temperature and lighting to create the best working environment for employees to focus on the task at hand.

Sit-stand desks with height-adjusting functions will enable staff to alternate between sitting and standing, helping them move while working in a confined space.

Courtesy of Citibank Korea Citibank Korea CEO Park Jin-hei, third from right in the back row and Citibank Korea Executive Vice President Valentin Valderrabano, third from left in the same row, show their palms with other executives and employees at a hand-printing event celebrating the relocation of its consumer banking group to a new office to Young City, a corporate office building in Yeongdeungpo, southwestern Seoul, Monday.