A new picture of the economy is emerging, one that may threaten large organizations when it comes to talent.

Companies keep cutting workers during the recession, and indications are they won’t rehire many during a recovery. A report this month from consulting firm Watson Wyatt Worldwide finds that 43 percent of firms expect a permanent decrease in staff size in three to five years compared with pre-economic crisis levels. Twenty-nine percent expect a permanent increase in staff size, and 28 percent expect no change.

What this means is a large pool of “unintentional entrepreneurs” is forming and will grow. Many high-quality people may choose never to return to the large companies that cut them loose and now show disdain toward hiring them.

Earlier this year, Wired magazine editor-in-chief Chris Anderson saw an economic tectonic shift in the works. Bigger corporations, he argued, have to make bigger, riskier bets with lower payoffs. And amid fast-paced change, larger organizations are likely to become less flexible given increased regulation.

“[T]he next new economy, the one rising from the ashes of this latest meltdown, will favor the small,” Anderson wrote in May.

Many top employees could be headed to new startups. Earlier this year, the Corporate Executive Board research firm found that one in four high-potential employees plan to quit over the next 12 months. As disturbing, the report found that disengaged workers are 31 percent less likely to quit than they were in 2006.

No wonder the study found that engaging employees was the top priority for this year among global heads of HR.

The recession could be propelling the workplace toward a future envisioned by experts polled by Workforce Management last year: clusters of core employees and satellites of transient talent helping with short-term needs.

What is a Global 1,000 company to do? In general, large firms will want to get their culture headed in the right direction—toward a team orientation and history-making mind-set described by authors Dave Logan, John King and Halee Fischer-Wright in their 2008 book Tribal Leadership.

But in the wake of heightened distrust toward business and the apparent rise in employee disengagement during the downturn, U.S. companies may first need to establish a new kind of compact with workers.

More than a specific contract with an individual or bargaining unit, I’m talking about the overall principles that guide a firm’s relationship with employees. In the last three decades, the compact has shifted from one grounded in a degree of economic security for workers to one more about arm’s-length, transactional ties with employees. Layoffs became ubiquitous and health care and retirement risks were pushed onto employees in the quest for higher profits.

But it’s becoming clear that this treatment of workers has its limits. An employee-employer bond built for lasting success, it seems to me, would include a bias toward sustained connections, transparency, shared decision-making and concern for the “whole” worker—including their overall economic security and the well-being of their community. These principles should lead to trust, engagement, productivity and even greatness.

Creating such a 21st century connection with employees is a major undertaking. But especially if small becomes huge in the economy of tomorrow, large organizations will need to think big today.