There’s been talk of late of the withering effects of corporations on workers’ souls.

It’s true that many jobs in corporate America are draining and can challenge one’s ethical code—telemarketing posts come to mind. And during this recession it appears many firms acted in shortsighted, callous ways that have helped kill workers’ spirits.

But I don’t think large companies are beyond redemption. In fact, the seeds of renewal are at hand for a better place to work for employees and managers alike.

Among the chief critics of the corporate workplace is Matthew Crawford. Crawford owns a motorcycle repair shop and writes about the virtues of manual labor and the moral perils of “knowledge work.”

In an essay published earlier this year in The New York Times Magazine, Crawford makes some interesting points about the way working as a mechanic prompts attentiveness, receptivity and humility. His earlier work as a writer of article abstracts and as leader of a Washington think tank, by contrast, pressured him into misrepresenting others’ ideas and fitting facts into foregone conclusions.

“Mechanical work has required me to cultivate different intellectual habits,” he wrote. “Further, habits of mind have an ethical dimension that we don’t often think about. Good diagnosis requires attentiveness to the machine, almost a conversation with it, rather than assertiveness, as in the position papers produced on K Street.”

But many workers in modern corporations have to pay close attention to business operations or market trends to succeed. And they are keenly aware they can fail with a new software product or ad campaign or manufacturing process.

As Kelefa Sennah suggested recently in The New Yorker, a retail marketing specialist tweaking a display rack is interacting with the physical world not too differently from the way a motorcycle mechanic does. “Why shouldn’t a retail display rack count as a tool, in Crawford’s sense of the word?” Sennah writes. “It’s a physical device meant to perform a particular function, and the shop’s cash registers generate a fairly accurate record of how well it succeeds.”

The real question with work, Sennah argues, is whether it is dull and repetitive, not whether it is manual.

Crawford’s vision for work that is absorbing and meaningful, ultimately, is the same one companies have for their workers. Firms want engagement, given that passion and commitment lead to better business results.

Engagement appears to have slid during the recession. A recent report from consulting firm Watson Wyatt Worldwide found employee engagement levels for workers overall dropped 9 percent since last year. Engagement fell close to 25 percent for top performers.

It seems many companies over-reacted to the downturn with meat-cleaver-like cuts, at times adding insult to injury when axing employees. The willingness to whoosh workers out the door is the latest episode in a three-decades-long trend that has prioritized shareholders and treated employees as largely disposable.

But there is still hope for corporations and workers, it seems to me. Regulatory, demographic and cultural trends are pushing firms to become more careful about job cuts, more socially responsible, more transparent, more democratic and more sustainable. Companies out ahead of these forces include Indian technology services provider HCL and online retailer Zappos.com, whose egalitarian, high-performance culture helped persuade Amazon.com to buy it.

U.S. workers themselves haven’t given up hope on companies. A recent report from staffing Randstad finds that Americans’ ideal employer cares about its employees and delivers on its promise to customers. The report also shows Americans want leaders who hold people accountable.

Caring, integrity, accountability. What workers want in organizations are soul-nourishing characteristics. Will companies fulfill those wishes?

Recent reports about workplace morale make it clearer still that the pendulum has swung too far in the direction of the disposable employee.

Employees feeling more secure on the job are much more satisfied with their work, according to a study published last month by job board SnagAJob.com. The survey of about 1,000 U.S. workers found that 52 percent reported a decline in job security compared with a year ago—and of those, just 49 percent expressed happiness with their jobs. Of those who think their jobs are more secure, 70 percent say they are happy at work.

Job happiness is a close cousin to employee engagement—the commitment employees feel to their employers and how much extra effort they give. Employee engagement data in recent months has been mixed but on the whole indicates a decline. And drooping engagement weighs on the bottom line.

Earlier this year, the Corporate Executive Board said the percentage of employees showing high levels of discretionary effort had dropped from 17.2 percent in 2005 to 6.5 percent, and that the decline in engagement is decreasing overall productivity by 3 to 5 percent.

A new report from staffing firm Randstad, on its surface, finds a countervailing trend. Employee morale in the U.S. is at its highest since 2004, says the survey of about 2,200 employees and some 830 employers. What’s more, 57 percent of employees say they are loyal to their firms, up 8 percentage points from last year.

But Randstad finds rockiness amid the rah-rah. Just a quarter of employees say their companies are loyal to them. And, the report notes, a morale boost is typical in a recession.

“This isn’t really a picture of satisfaction,” the study says. In the wake of widespread layoffs, “remaining workers are happy to have their jobs, but they feel the loss of their workplace families,” the report says. “They are optimistic about their futures, but the feeling is slipping every year.”

Americans’ resiliency has been battered by three decades of firms treating employees as disposable, as author Louis Uchitelle puts it.

It’s as if workers want to love their employers, but keep getting spurned by firms fundamentally focused on short-term results in a cutthroat global economy.

It’s a testament to Americans’ hopefulness and sense of dignity that, if anything, workers want more from workplaces these days. The Randstad survey found that 80 percent of employees say their ideal employer “cares about their employees as much as their customers,” up from 66 percent last year. That was the top response, tied with “delivers on its promise to customers,” which was up 15 percentage points from last year. It seems that in the wake of fraud in the housing and financial fields, workers are putting a higher value on a firm’s integrity.

Employers shouldn’t guarantee employment, as they all but did decades ago. But they can back policies to strengthen our still-skimpy safety net. And they can handle their workforce with greater care.

Even if we’re headed toward organizations with a smaller “core” of employees, those workers likely will perform best with a degree of job security and a culture of true respect for customers and workers.

Consultants Laurie Bassi and Dan McMurrer see demographic and other trends pushing organizations to be “worthy.” I’ve called for a “21st century connection”  with workers.

Another way to frame the issue is to move to seeing employees as “recyclable.” That is, don’t trash them to make the quarterly numbers. Do your best to keep them, and keep helping them upgrade their skills to fit your changing business needs.

Companies hoping to thrive in the recovery ahead would do well to get out in front of the pendulum’s return. Ever more data indicates the era of the disposable employee is coming to an end.