Allison Levin is no longer a money-maker. She no longer handles clients' accounts, bringing in revenue for her newly merged firm, the behemoth of the financial services consulting world, PricewaterhouseCoopers. Instead, she contemplates the advantages of sabbaticals for her company's busy workers. She mulls the need for concierge services. If someone walks employees' dogs, will that free people to concentrate on their work?

As head of a newly created office, Levin believes she is marching along with a vanguard of better-managed businesses that are savvy to employee needs. "We have a real strong belief that you stay where you are because you like what you are doing and you like who you are working with," she said.

You can expect more such voices in Corporate America in 1999. Faced with a dearth of workers for certain jobs and greater time and performance demands on those now employed, some businesses find that being nice is a good technique. Workplace USA will see other nuances in 1999 in the relationship between workers and bosses, but much of what is likely to take place will be advances in long-brewing developments:

Coping with time-squeezed jobs. Finding job parity for women, minority and disabled workers. Confronting workplace dilemmas such as racial and sexual harassment. Dealing with a thickening forest of undertrained, underqualified workers. Adjusting to a strange new workplace of just-in-time workers and loosening bonds between workers and their companies.

Besides these issues, there are some relatively new ones:

- What are the boundaries for workers and bosses in the new electronic office? Where does a worker's privacy stop and a company's authority take over in a world of flickering computer screens? Will owners of telemarketing and other low-wage facilities turn their high-tech workplaces into electronic sweatshops?

- Where do workers find protection and economic security in a world of diminished pension plans, ever rising health care costs and the virtual end of lifetime jobs?

- As the welfare rolls shrink under a federal mandate to move recipients into the workplace mainstream, what kinds of positions will businesses have on hand for those who lagged behind the early job-seeking efforts?

As these issues evolve in 1999, one of the most critical challenges for Corporate America is finding and retaining workers in an era of persistently low unemployment.

"Companies are beginning to realize that public statements from the CEO are not enough. The question is whether their own management walks the talk," said Judy Winfrey, a management consultant for Hewitt Associates of suburban Lincolnshire.

This does not mean that Workplace USA is going to be a kinder, more nurturing hearth for everyone in 1999. As consultant Winfrey also suggests, "the cold shoulder has not changed" for those whose career path has hit an obstacle, or those who no longer fit with the company's plans. But for those in demand, such as high-tech professionals, market-sharpened financial services experts, corporate executives with stellar records or skilled factory workers, this could mean better offers are out there, complete with hiring bonuses, or more perks from your current company to convince you to stay where you are.

In terms of pay trends, the use of annual increases is likely to shrink as companies rely more on pay-for-performance plans. Many companies also are leaning more heavily on lump-sum payments as a way to keep down long-term costs. For those companies with union contracts, the inclination is toward longer contacts as a way to control and flatten out pay spirals. Overall, workers for American businesses received an average 2.7 percent yearly pay increase, when adjusted for inflation, according to annual figures as of September. That was the highest one-year pay hike for non-government employees since the U.S. Labor Department began its record-keeping in 1976.

As for their bosses, 1999 may bring some changes in the way they are rewarded.

If the U.S. stock market cools down, then so will the upward spike in compensation for executives, who have benefited handsomely from cashing in their stock options in recent years. Companies also are likely to employ rewards other than stock options, such as long-term cash payments, as incentives to executives in addition to their regular salaries, says Erin Milligan, a Chicago-based benefits expert with William M. Mercer Inc., a business consulting firm.

Another route companies may take, she said, is providing low-interest loans for executives to purchase large amounts of company stock. That acts as a signal to investors that the firm's executives are committed to the company, she explains, and at the same time raises the possibility of great financial rewards if the stock advances.

In the area of benefits, says Chicago attorney Columbus "Chris" Gangemi, watch for a lot of legal battles over how far companies must go in providing benefits to workers who are hired on short- or long-term contracts through outside employers.

And legal struggles also loom regarding the issue of sexual harassment on the job. The Supreme Court last year laid down the rules for employers: If a company sets up a system to deal with harassment, but workers do not avail themselves of it, then employers do not face a legal risk. Now the question is what kind of systems are necessary, and new lower court rulings are likely to provide some guidance, says Martin Malin, a labor law expert at IIT Kent Law School. There will be great pressure now on employers, he said, to lay down rules and guidelines for dealing with sexual harassers. Amid these economic and legal problems, there is a larger, more encompassing issue.

It is the issue Allison Levin recently began to focus on: How do workers and companies get along in a workplace where the rules have been shuffled again and again? The fruits of the workplace uncertainty and current economic enigma -- layoffs continue even though the jobless rate is skirting close to record-low levels -- repeatedly appear in polls that point to workers' increasing skepticism about their companies' loyalty toward them and their pessimism about their future economic security and that of their children. "The old compact between workers and their companies is shattered. That is not going to change. It is going to continue," said Carl Van Horn, a political economist at Rutgers University, who recently led a nationwide survey of workers.

"What people have to do," he said, "is figure out how to navigate this economy and not to expect their company to do it for them."