The Civil Service Bureau has delegated the Employee Development Service to provide a hotline counselling on stress management for its civil servants. At the beginning of this year, through public auction, the Civil Service Bureau has assigned our Agency and another social service agency to provide a hotline service as a two-year pilot project. Service contents include work stress management counselling, interpersonal relationship counselling, emotional control counselling, career development counselling, marital counselling, pre-marital counselling, parenting counselling, pre-retirement counselling, and other mental health counselling.

The Civil Service Bureau has selected 11 departments and 2 bureaus . with approximately 32,000 civil servants to experiment the project with priority (refer the chart). The Employee Development Service is responsible for 7 departments with 16,000 civil servants. Each one received a pamphlet introducing the service and a card with the hotline number on it to remind them when and how to use the service. The project has officially begun in June 1999. Phone calls are answered by professional social workers who will provide information, resources and suggestion for solving the problems. Appointments can also be made to meet a counsellor. In-depth counselling is available for complicate cases. All information discussed during calls or appointments is strictly confidential.

According to Miss Doris Fong, Manageress of the Employee Development Service, the HKCS has provided employee assistance programme for many of the big corporations such as the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Co. Ltd., the Hang Seng Bank Co. Ltd., the Cable and Wirelss HKT, and the Mass Transit Railway Corporation in the past 10 years. Last year, the Employee Development Service was assigned by the Post Office to provide services to its 7,000 employees of different job nature. About half of the questions were related to work, such as job nature or environment, relationship between employees, etc. An interesting fact was that their employees were very active in using the service, which reflected that employers can use this type of service to understand the problems and needs of their employees.

Miss Fong forecasted that under the civil servant reform, there will be quite a number of employees seeking for counselling in worrying their future prospect. In fact, since the hotline started, they have been receiving 3 to 4 calls per day regarding job environment change and stress management.

Miss Fong also mentioned: "We have experience in dealing with civil servants, which is an advantage in providing this kind of hotline service. Actually, there is not much in difference in the problems concerned between civil servants and employees from private companies. Now that the Government is willing to follow the practice of private companies in providing stress management service for their employees and be a good employer, we should acknowledge and encourage the effort."

Departments/Bureaus	No. of Civil Servants
Housing Department	14,472
Labour Department	1,898
Civil Aviation Department	749
Water Supplies Department	6,151
Printing Department	451
Immigration Department	5,867
Government Flying Service	257
Registration and Electoral Office	204
Civil Service Training and Development Institute	164
Official Receiver's Office	266
Department of Justice	1,990
Education and Manpower Bureau	102
Information Technology and Broadcasting Bureau	72