Growing attention to furloughs in recent months suggests some companies are getting back to basics about how to treat their employees.

Reducing workers’ scheduled hours can help businesses cut costs amid the recession. But furloughs also preserve ties with employees in an old-fashioned way that may pay off today.

An April survey of U.S. companies by consulting firm Watson Wyatt Worldwide found that 17 percent had used mandatory furloughs, up from 11 percent in February. Another 4 percent expected to implement a mandatory furlough sometime in the following 12 months.

Framed as an alternative to layoffs, furloughs can play a big role in bolstering morale. That’s a point I make in a paper that will be available later this month as part of a webcast on furloughs. In the course of writing that paper, I learned that door and window manufacturer Pella has utilized mandatory and voluntary furloughs this year.

In some cases, noble intentions motivated employees. “People are saying, ‘I can afford to take some time off, because I’ve got a co-worker with young kids to feed,’ ” company spokeswoman Kathy Krafka Harkema told me. “It’s really brought out the best in people.”

In a way, furloughs are from an earlier era. They’ve been used for decades in manufacturing and in the airline industry to deal with slumping demand. But furloughs—and the ways they keep employees and firms connected through hard times—fit today’s growing recognition of the power of relationships.

Furloughs are of a piece with new corporate social networks designed to strengthen ties among co-workers and forge them with alumni, as well as with the rise of LinkedIn and Facebook as recruiting and business development tools.

I recently heard interesting comments on the significance of social networking and employer-employee bonds from Allen Stone, an HR professional with 40 years in the field. Stone said he sees the explosive growth of Twitter and the like as a consequence of younger people seeking out secure relationships. He says they often didn’t have them in their families, and now struggle to find them with employers.

“The younger generation will move around every two to three years just looking for that stability because they didn’t have it in their homes,” he says. “That’s what they’re looking for—those connections. We all look for that.”

Stone, who was laid off from a mining company this year and is looking for work, says a major challenge for companies coming out of the recession will be to restore a sense of loyalty. Companies “can’t afford the continued chaos of people leaving,” he says. “We need to get back to the basics.”

The furlough is a form of those basics. So is providing a degree of employment stability for workers, so they feel secure enough to focus on their work and inspired to put in extra effort for the firm.

Is your organization getting back to people management basics?