Taking Cover at Work : Jobs: Hard times are sparking violence on the job.

A lesson of the ‘90s for employers: Employee loyalty has greatly diminished and will continue to decline with economic and personal insecurity. These conditions contribute to the high toll of workplace violence in California.

Ultimately, curbing violence at work will result in a reinvention of the social contract between employers and their workers. Performance-related employee behavior must be aggressively but intelligently managed. This means getting a troubled employee to mental health professionals who can address serious problems. But it also means that employers need to be more forthright about problems and economic realities that force organizations to reduce jobs.

Human behavior is a complex subject. Increasingly, employers are realizing that workers with strong “people skills” are going to be more productive and effective than those who lack them.