Establishing rules for the new workplace.

• Author: Challenger, John A.
• Position: Economics

FOR AMERICAN BUSINESSES and their employees, the rules on such basic issues as hiring and layoffs, work schedules, and corporate structure are changing at a rapid pace. They are driven by macro forces such as globalization and the rise of shareholder power, as well as more-personal decisions, like the desire to balance work and family life or to keep on working past traditional retirement age.

For example, there is a fusion going on between home and work. We cannot get away from work when we are at home, and we cannot get away from home when we are at work. I recently visited the Northern Telecom headquarters in Toronto, Canada--an indoor city complete with a main street, cyber cafe, dry cleaners, video rental, exercise studio, museum, pharmacy, bank, kitchens, recreation rooms, and sleeping quarters.

In fact, childcare and eldercare centers in many offices today mean that your offspring and parents are there, too! The only home-oriented things missing from the millennium workplace are churches and synagogues, but I have been heating more and more about spirituality in the workplace.

On the other hand, we cannot get away from work even when we are not there. Since the film "2001: A Space Odyssey" debuted more than three decades ago, we have been wondering when computers would become human or superhuman. What sneaked up behind us was the opposite: Human beings are becoming increasingly electronic. We carry our cell phones, beepers, fax machines, email, portable CD players, and laptops--our office--with us at all times.

Our cell phones are ringing off the hook. Commuting to an office is not downtime because there are customers to be called. On the morning or evening commuter train, there used to be a subtle taboo about talking on a cell phone, but that has disappeared. We can look to Hong Kong for the future. When you go into some restaurants there, you aren't asked about smoking or nonsmoking, but whether you wish to be seated in the section where you can leave your cell phone on. Golf courses around the U.S. are banning the use of cell phones during play.

When you leave for vacation, the office wants to know where you are going to be. One woman executive recently told me that she sat on the beach in the Dominican Republic talking on her cell phone until 3 p.m. Satellite technology and global positioning mean there is no place to hide. The one place and time when you cannot be reached is on a plane during takeoff and landing, and that's only because of Federal regulations.

The global marketplace further erodes our personal time. Three major business zones are forming: the Americas, Europe/Africa, and Asia. If American businesses have customers who need servicing in Asia, it is essential that they work from 5 p.m. to 11 p.m.; for customers in Europe, they better be up at 3 a.m.

All of this technology makes workers highly mobile, and some companies never want them at a central office facility. Consultants today spend their workweeks on the road, in the air, and at the customer site. Four or five days of travel are not unusual. If they do need an office, they are often hoteling, checking in with the receptionist in Dallas, being assigned an office, hooking into the network, and turning on the cell phone so that customers, clients, bosses, colleagues, direct reports, and copier and financial services salesmen can reach them 24 hours a day at any location in the country. Two days later, it may be Pittsburgh, where they greet a new receptionist who assigns a similar-looking office. Bringing their children's pictures in a briefcase to set on the desk helps to personalize the equipment.

The line between work and home, public and private, is increasingly blurry. Multiple e-mail addresses and phone numbers are one way to try to redraw those boundaries. I need an e-mail address that is my personal one for family and friends, a different one for work, and I would love still another one for all the junk e-mail that comes my way. I worry about what happens if too many junk mailers get my personal e-mail. Will I have to keep changing identities? I don't have the time to wade through all of the e-mails I get every day. Now, I have to check two different names several times a day. This change has happened so suddenly that we were not prepared.

The overburdened worker must reclaim some of those boundaries. Tell your employer: I do not want to be called on the weekend or on vacation (except in an emergency). Do not take your cell phone with you when you are in your car; you might get in an accident while concentrating on soothing an irate customer. Don't travel on Saturdays and Sundays.

The problem is, you might lose your job. One side effect of all these technological advances and the rise of a global economy is that no one's job is ever totally secure and no company can remain an industry leader without constant innovation and attention to the bottom line.

How did we get here? Let's take a look back at the ways life has changed for American companies and workers in the last few decades.

The former economic system in the U.S. was characterized by a variety of structures that restricted the flow of people. Lifetime employment was a goal that companies and individuals alike hoped to achieve. When individuals accepted employment offers, they expected, as long as they did not do anything too wrong--like coming in late constantly, embarrassing the boss, or embezzling funds--that their jobs would be safe. The cornerstone of the social contract between the organization and the individual was long-term--even lifetime--employment.

Individual identity was tied in with the company. IBM employees thought themselves privileged because of their identification with the organization. Big Blue hired the best and the brightest. People built their lives around the company. Often, a worker's closest friends came from within it. People closely integrated their working and personal lives. They bore witness to each other's lives, developing deep, solid, secure relationships over a lifetime. It was not unusual for coworkers to be godparents of each other's children.

After God and family, loyalty to the company was at the top of the value scale. The employee trusted the firm would provide job security; the employee returned that loyalty in kind, by pledging not to leave and certainly never thinking seriously about working for the competition. In fact, most workers cultivated an authentic dislike for rival companies. In the 1960s and 1970s, most of our outplacement clients, who had been terminated by their former employers, refused to even consider working for other companies in the same industry, willingly sacrificing organizations that had a special need for their industry knowledge.

There was a balance between shareholders and stakeholders. The latter--in this...