France Telecom is calling on its 20,000 managers to respond to a string of suicides by its employees. It comes after the latest incident, the 23rd this year.

A 32-year-old woman threw herself from the fourth-floor window of her office building on Friday. Trade unions say the suicides have come as French workers across several sectors suffer fallout from the global financial crisis and see widespread layoffs. Psychoanalysts say the suicides are not just a question of pressure. They say of greater concern is the organisation of work, style of management and method of evaluation. The company's Orange debt-collection service has announced its response.

Barbara Dalibard, Chief Executive of Orange Business Services, said, "We have already launched some actions, for instance, to increase the number of HR people with the employees to make sure that the social workers also are increasing. We will launch also some discussions with the trade unions about stress and making sure that we capture all the weak signals."

(CCTV September 16, 2009)