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This article discusses the challenges that companies face when trying to create virtual corporations. It describes the competitive environment that created the virtual organization, illustrates the changes with three developmental models, and describes a New Deal employment relationship that replaces lifetime employment and requires changes to work and rewards systems. To creative an effective New Deal, companies must accept that the Old Deal is gone. They also must focus on processes, not functions; develop such virtual relationships as alliances, joint ventures, and partnerships; and send clear messages to employees for a workable policy.

Teams won't be effective unless the team roles and goals are clarified and team members and leaders support the process. Team development must involve a partnership of HR strategists, line managers, and team members. Otherwise, as experience shows, teams will most likely fail to meet expectations. Every team champion has to face the following teamwork design challenges: reward and recognition; management processes and systems; individual and team competencies; organization; team and job design; work processes and business systems; values and cultures; and leadership. In addition to tackling these issues, organizations must take a holistic approach to pay for teams-reconsidering what they pay for and how their pay is positioned.

"The end of jobs" has become a euphemism for the dramatic changes in the way work is organized and managed. Students of labor history appreciate that the new model of work management represents an abrupt turnaround in our work philosophy and belief system. We have to go back to the 1890s—the beginning of the Industrial Age-to find a comparable period of change. With the first factories came the problem of how to supervise large groups of workers. The work management paradigm that emerged then prevailed largely unchanged for the next century. In the 1990s, new methods of organizing work and managing and rewarding workers are emerging to meet the business challenges of global competition and technological change. The challenge for human resources professionals is to develop the expertise to know when and how to apply the new methods.

The nature of jobs is changing, from clearly defined responsibilities to a broader, more flexible use of skills and competencies. As the changes continue, and in the event the traditional concept of jobs disappears, employers won't be able to benchmark job salary levels because the marketplace won't provide close enough job matches. This article discusses the evolving concept of jobs, the common uses for traditional surveys, the future of surveys, and the methods that will be used for salary comparisons when jobs no longer have marketplace matches.

Too much of the conventional wisdom about pay and performance management is based on large companies' practices. These firms typically define fairness in terms of consistency, reliance on inflexible human resource systems, and a culture that attracts and retains people who are more comfortable with predictability and fairness than with ambiguity and risk-taking. The bigger the firm, the more likely it will publish salary grades and ranges, rely on formal job evaluation, and use HR programs that don't support effective performance management. Entrepreneurial firms, on the other hand, manage pay and performance effectively, not because they have sophisticated programs, but because they need to eliminate weak links and to reward top performers. They also have leaders who know what is happening in the organization and the will to hold people accountable for their performance. Big companies can manage like their entrepreneurial counterparts if they are willing to replace some long-standing HR practices with an HR approach that values inconsistency, flexibility, and hands-on management.

Effective team measurement hinges on a clear identification of team priorities, expected team results, and the proper measurements to use to address individual and team performance. This article shows how companies may take specific steps to devise effective team performance measurements. The steps involve reviewing organizational measures, defining team measurement points, identifying individual accomplishments that support the team, weighting the accomplishments, developing performance measures and standards, and deciding on a performance tracking method. These steps lead to a feedback loop, which provides clear direction to team members, then maintains their focus and enables them to accomplish their goals, which should motivate them to continue to perform at high levels.

The U.S. labor market has always been in flux, and contrary to common belief, employees have not historically remained in one job for the lengths of their careers. But, in an effort to remain adaptable and efficient in the labor market, employers today are making fewer paternalistic promises; e.g., they are telling employees not to expect long-term employment nor to rely on benefits that depend on long-term service. Large employers have tried to encourage employees to protect themselves by giving them more control over-and responsibility for-planning and saving through workplace benefit programs. For employees, benefits they once took for granted may no longer be available. This article concludes with a sober look at employers' future role in offering benefits.

Off-site work arrangements are becoming the norm. Through technological advances, companies are able to create networks of managers, customers, suppliers, and production and service workers that literally span the globe and the clock. Under the old model, employees reported to a central location where their bosses could observe their work; they were all subject to the same rules; and their pay was primarily contingent on the amount of time they spent working. Under the new model, work arrangements are flexible and unique to the organization and, correspondingly, pay must be contingent on employees' contributions, not time spent at the office, and managers must change their outlooks on organizing and valuing work.