When you enter Meretz MK Zahava Gal-On's office, even before you begin to converse with her, you can understand what makes up her personal world. Alongside a poster of the International Declaration of Human Rights and the Declaration of Independence, and books that deal with the various areas of Gal-On's work, next to the desk hangs a corkboard on which pictures from various events are tacked, like her meeting with former United States president Jimmy Carter and photos from Peace Now demonstrations.

The papers that are connected to the areas in which Gal-On is engaged are kept in colorful binders, and alongside them are three decorative boxes: In the one there is bubble gum in all colors, in another sugar-free candies and in the third there is chocolate. Various playthings and "executive toys" are scattered all around.

"Maybe it is something feminine that creates the need to make the workplace personal, but not necessarily," she says. "It's something that is connected to aesthetics. The work environment is important to me and surrounding myself with personal things satisfies some need I have. Without them I can't concentrate. This is who I am and this is my personality: What makes up my work environment represents what I say and think."

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Gal-On's approach reflects a trend that is now sweeping the United States: making the workspace personal. Kelley Moore, a lifestyle expert, believes that the personalization of this space can improve the work of someone who spends 10 hours a day there. In her book published in the United States, "Cube Chic: Take Your Office Space from Drab to Fab!" (Quirk Books) she expresses opposition to the drabness that prevails in the workspaces of salaried employees, and argues that personalizing an office cubicle increases the worker's productivity.

To this end, Moore offers design advice that is intended to transform the workspace into a seaside pastorale (light blue, with the addition of seashells), tranquil in the Zen style (with half-walls of bamboo and potted plants in every corner) or into something out of Hollywood, with neon colors and the addition of an Avenue of Stars, on one of which the worker's name is printed.

Purchasers of Moore's book might put next to it in the shopping cart a "Pimp My Cubicle" kit, which borrows its name from a program on MTV in which a boring vehicle is transformed into a showy and glittering car. The kit, which is marketed in the United States, is aimed at upgrading the decoration of work cubicles in a similar way and it includes a gilded keyboard, a page-holder on which a dollar sign is engraved and a flashing disco lamp.

A person or a number

Yoram Dubovsky, CEO of the Nofar organizational consulting firm and a member of the Israel Society for Organizational Development that was founded about 20 years ago, tells of a person who started to work at a large company without a permanent place to sit. "Every day the employee had to find a new place to sit," says Dubovsky, "and after two months he simply left. This is understandable. For him, the process of absorption was important; he felt that they should relate to him as an individual and as a worker within the organization. By not giving him a place of his own they were relating to him only as a number."

Dobovsky sees great importance in the personalization of the workplace, which can afford the worker "a sense that this is his first or second home, a feeling of hominess instead of alienation."

Architect Tal Adut also talks about the need to make the work environment as personal as possible. "What makes a workplace real," she says, "isn't the parquet for NIS 3,000, but rather its combination with personal furry dolls and a picture of the employee's child. A workplace is a branch of a home. People are so afraid to make their workspaces personal that the result is scary cubicles, which in the best case have a bit of a picture in them."

Adut is not afraid of an extreme situation in wich a worker will decorate his work cubicle like a sado-maso club, as Moore suggests in her book. "I don't see the possibility that this will get there," she says. "In the meantime we are at the other extreme." In any case, she stresses that the workplace has to inspire the worker, and it doesn't matter from which materials he draws this inspiration. The optimal workspace, as far as she is concerned, is a large, well-lit space that will enable the creation of privacy and in which there are a great many personal items "that turn me on."

One person who implements Adut's approach in her office is Irit Imber, deputy productions director at Keshet Broadcasting, who works in a well-lit office with many windows. In her office hangs a large picture from the satirical animation series "M.K. 22," which was broadcast when she managed the Bip Channel, and there is also the statuette of the Israeli Television Academy that she was awarded for production of the program. Her colorful furniture served as stage settings for programs that were broadcast on the channel she managed. The other items in the room are personal: pictures that she painted herself, small gifts that she received from her four children, family photographs, a blue Moroccan-style armchair and a carton of teabags.

Imber says that the decoration of her office is of great importance to her. "It gives a feeling of home," she says. "I couldn't work without a lot of visual stimuli and colors. This makes for a creative atmosphere. I'm here at least 12 hours a day, and with that number of hours, it's clear why this is necessary."

There are those who say that overly personal decoration can on the one hand harm the quality of the work and on the other decrease the number of leisure hours. Adut does not agree. "Home is home and work is work," she says, "but it's also necessary to feel good at work."

Architect Irma Orensteindoes have reservations. According to her, someone who has an office is obligated to give his employees a good and well-designed work environment "that will afford a pleasant stay of 10 hours at the office." However, she says, "after the proprietors have invested a lot of money and have seen to a handsome and well-designed work environment, it is not appropriate for the worker to take the personalization too far. In the right dosage, like family pictures, it's alright, but it isn't necessary to exaggerate. When I design offices in a clean way, I want the design to remain clean. At home there are pictures and dolls. In the office, you work."

Without any plaster

Orenstein stresses that personal items are liable to harm other workers. "It's not to the point for someone to hang political stickers," she says. "An employee represents the office at which he is employed, and the office walls must remain the way the owner of the office wants."

She describes a 3,000-meter space that she recently designed, in which there are dozens of workers, each of whom has an area that is intended for his comfort. "Even the CEO," she says, "has a specific shelf that is intended for her family pictures, and that is the only place they are going to be - not anywhere else."

In Israel, insofar as is known, there are no large organizations that have distributed to their workers a memo that clearly defines what they are permitted and what they are forbidden to place in their workspace. In the Israel Defense Forces, for example, it is customary to hang pictures and newspaper clippings in the office and according to the IDF Spokesman, "It can be said that there is a prohibition on hanging inappropriate pictures that could harm the dignity or the way of life of any IDF soldier."

MK Gal-On agrees that there is no room for hurtful items in the workplace. "There isn't censorship," she says "but there is internalization."

One who could not work according to rules like that is television presenter Yigal Shilon, whose two offices are full of personal items. Objectors to smoking would certainly not feel comfortable looking at the many photos of people smoking cigars. As Shilon puts it, "Both rooms are decorated with dozens of pictures without one bit of plaster peeping out." Among those photographed are Che Guevara, Fidel Castro and Kramer from the "Seinfeld" show, with a cigar in his mouth. Also hanging in Shilon's office are pictures of his brother, Dan Shilon, with a cigar, and of him and his son Eyal, both of them pleasurably smoking.

"I wouldn't be able to work in an empty white room," says Shilon, "and maybe now, thanks to this conversation, I can understand why I've never worked in the empty editing room next door. I'm simply unable to work in a place where there are no personal elements."