"Dot-com" styles hang on

Health Progress, Jul/Aug 2001

Big egos are out and humility is in since the stock market crash of so many computer-based companies last year, writes Michelle Conlin in Business Week. But even so, she says, a number of cultural developments from the "dot-com" era are still around.

Among these is the furnishing by some companies of connoisseur coffee to their workers. In fact, says Richard Wyckoff, president of Aramark Refreshment Services, the nation's top coffee supplier, sales of office espresso machines tripled in the past year. The 1990s coffee habit has "spilled over into a legacy," Wyckoff says.

Some things have changed, of course. The international recruiting firm Korn/Ferry has brought back its dress code, for example. Men's Warehouse, Inc., a clothing retailer, and the fashion designer Joseph Aboud have launched a campaign to persuade businessmen to abandon the casual wear of the late '90s for the traditional suit.

But many of the old trends linger. Although many Silicon Valley-type firms failed, the survivors still compete for computer-savvy workers. As the U.S. economy adapts itself to a hectic global pace, companies of all types must recruit employees willing to spend long hours in the office. Bosses also vividly recall the great labor shortage of the '90s. Thus they continue to try to fit the job to the worker, rather than the other way around.

Skilled employees, for their part, continue to behave like free-agent athletes. They expect companies-and even departments within companies-to bid for their services.

To retain such workers and to sign up new ones, employers offer such perks as management retreats, special awards, and help with care for children and older dependents. Deborah K. Holmes is the director of the Center for the New Workforce, an organization aimed at helping Ernst & Young LLP's employees integrate their work and their private lives. Contemporary employers must remain flexible, she believes. "People will have nine jobs by the time they are 30," she says. "We'd be delighted to be two or three of those jobs."