“The resignation rate has shown signs of slowing down, and it did not pose a significant impact on government work,” Yeung said at a meeting of the Legislative Council’s public service panel, while stressing that resignations were not concentrated in specific departments.

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About 10,500 civil servants left their posts in 2021-22. There were about 6,100 retirees and 3,734 quit, a 2.1 per cent resignation rate.

“We would like to encourage more government departments, especially those with long-term manpower needs, to conduct year-round recruitment for hiring talent,” Yeung said.

Only 13 government roles are open for year-round recruitment at present, including the police force, dentists under the Department of Health, clerical and secretarial officers, and veterinary technologists at the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department.

Yeung proposed that departments hire retired officers who had left the government for one or two years on a short-term basis to help with the year-round recruitment.

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She added her bureau had required different departments to shorten hiring procedures as a way to help ease the brain drain. She said the time required to hire clerical officers had been cut to three to four months from the previous 10 months.

Lawmaker Dennis Leung Tsz-wing asked if the Civil Service Bureau had set a goal for filling vacancies, which were still remarkable despite the resignation rate slowing.

“The signs of a slowdown was the conclusion as you just compared last year and the year before. But if you compare last year with the rate for 2008-09, which stood at nearly 0.5 per cent, one can see an over four-times increase,” he said.

Yeung acknowledged the increase but stopped short of giving a time frame to fill all the vacancies.

She said that about 40 per cent of those who resigned last year did so during the probation period, which typically lasted for three years.

Yeung attributed the reason to a desire by younger employees to get a variety of work experience. She said the government would adopt different ways to retain talent, including carrying out different training and exchange programmes.

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Panel chairman Kwok Wai-keung said he was concerned about the government’s ability to attract young talent, as the number of public servants aged 29 or under had shown a declining trend in the past four years, accounting for only about 12.8 per cent of the civil service workforce in 2022-23.

Yeung said the trend had been seen not only in the public sector but also in private organisations.

She added the younger generation nowadays tended to pursue higher education to a greater extent.

“It is common for young people to pursue master’s or doctoral degree programmes after completing their bachelor’s degrees,” she said.

She added postgraduate study had become more prevalent than before and it had affected the number of public servants aged 29 or under.

Labour sector lawmaker Chau Siu-chung said frontline public servants had reported to unions that their workload and work pressure had significantly increased, to the point they had to do overtime without compensation.

Yeung said public servants “do bear a certain level of responsibility” and that she believed they would not mind a temporary need to work overtime during emergency situations.

But she admitted that it was “not ideal” to see the number of unfilled posts and emphasised that the government had been recruiting and asking departments to expedite the recruitment process.