An accident at work in the office must be reported to the employers' liability insurance association as soon as the injured person is unfit for work for more than three days, or if the accident is fatal. The report is due within three days of the employer learning of it (section 193 SGB VII). Minor injuries are not reportable, but they do have to be documented.
What counts as an accident at work in an office?
An accident at work is an event limited in time, acting on the body from outside during an insured activity, that causes damage to health or death (section 8 paragraph 1 SGB VII). What matters is not the severity of the injury but the connection to the work. Journeys count as well.
In offices and administrative settings, the typical cases are:
- Tripping over a cable, slipping on a wet floor, falling on the stairs. The insurance associations name tripping, slipping and falling as the typical accident type in administrative businesses.
- Walking into an open cupboard door, falling off an office chair, crushing a hand in a drawer or filing cabinet.
- A cut from a paper trimmer or from cardboard packaging.
- A burn from hot water in the kitchenette.
- A commuting accident on the direct route between home and place of work (section 8 paragraph 2 SGB VII).
Not covered are complaints without an external event, for instance back pain that has built up over months, and accidents during purely private activities. Someone who walks to the supermarket during a break and falls there normally does not have an accident at work. Cover also applies when working from home, although the line between work and private life is often disputed there. When in doubt: report it and let the insurance association decide.
When the insurance association has to be informed
An accident is reportable if the insured person is killed by it or is unfit for work for more than three days (section 193 paragraph 1 SGB VII). The report is due within three days of the business learning of it. Fatal accidents and accidents with several seriously injured people must be reported immediately.
What matters is when the clock actually starts: not on the day of the accident, but at the moment the business learns that the incapacity for work will exceed the three-day threshold. In practice that is usually the day the medical certificate or a follow-up certificate arrives.
Further points that office businesses regularly overlook:
- For fatal accidents and accidents with several seriously injured people, the report also goes to the state authority responsible for occupational safety, that is the trade supervisory office or the occupational safety authority.
- Where a works council or staff council exists, it has to be involved in the report. The injured person is entitled to a copy.
- The report is usually filed electronically today, via the SV-Meldeportal or the portal of the relevant insurance association. Which route applies to your business is stated on your association's website.
- Failing to meet the reporting duty is an administrative offence under section 209 SGB VII and can be fined.
Counting the three days correctly
What counts are calendar days of incapacity for work, not working days. The day of the accident itself does not count. Weekends, public holidays and non-working days do count. So an accident only becomes reportable from the fourth day of incapacity after the day of the accident.
Three worked examples:
- Case 1, not reportable: a fall over a cable on Monday 7 September. The certificate runs from Tuesday 8 September to Thursday 10 September. That is three days. No accident report, but an entry in the first aid documentation.
- Case 2, reportable: the same accident, but a follow-up certificate extends the incapacity to Friday 11 September. That makes four days and crosses the threshold. If the follow-up certificate arrives on Thursday 10 September, the three-day deadline runs from that day. The report should go out by Friday rather than stretching the deadline into the weekend.
- Case 3, the weekend counts: a cut on Friday 4 September, incapacity from Saturday to Tuesday 8 September. Although only two working days are lost, that is four calendar days. The accident is reportable.
A rule of thumb for everyday use: as soon as a certificate reaches beyond the third day after the accident, the report is due. If you are unsure whether the threshold will be crossed, report it. An unnecessary report does no harm, a missing one does.
Which report when? A decision guide
Four case groups cover office practice. Once they are written down as a procedure, nobody has to think in an emergency, only look it up. What matters is the severity of the injury and the duration of the incapacity for work, not the question of who was at fault.
- Minor injury, no incapacity for work (a plaster, brief treatment): no accident report. Entry in the first aid documentation, kept for five years.
- Incapacity for work of up to and including three days: no accident report. Documentation as above, plus a check on whether a follow-up certificate still crosses the threshold.
- More than three days of incapacity for work: accident report to the insurance association within three days of learning of it, involvement of the employee representation, copy to the injured person.
- Fatal accident or several seriously injured people: immediate report to the insurance association and to the state authority responsible for occupational safety. Leave the accident site unchanged where possible until it is clear whether an inspection will take place.
Commuting accidents follow the same thresholds. The report simply notes that it was a commuting accident.
Documentation: the first aid log
Every instance of first aid has to be documented, and that documentation kept available for five years (section 24 DGUV Regulation 1). This applies regardless of the reporting duty and also to minor injuries. The point: if a small wound becomes an infection weeks later, the accident at work can still be evidenced.
A robust entry contains:
- Date, time and place of the event
- Name of the injured person and type of injury
- The sequence of events in one sentence, ideally including the cause
- Names of witnesses and of the person who gave first aid
- The type of measure taken and whether a doctor was involved
Data protection is the most common mistake here. The entries contain health data and must not sit in the first-aid kit as an open logbook that anyone can read through. The usual solutions are notepads with individual sheets filed under lock, or digital recording with restricted access. How this fits together with first aiders, first-aid kits and the notice is covered in the article on first aid in the office. You can create the matching notice with emergency numbers and first aiders using our first-aid notice generator.
The Durchgangsarzt: when employees have to go there
For accidents at work, not every doctor is the right one. A Durchgangsarzt, a specialist accident consultant, has to be involved if the incapacity for work continues beyond the day of the accident, if treatment is likely to be needed for more than a week, if remedies or aids are prescribed, or if it is a recurrence relating to the same accident.
The Durchgangsarzt decides on the type of treatment and reports directly to the accident insurer. For the business, that means two things: the address of the nearest Durchgangsarzt belongs on the first aid notice, and the injured person should be told that this is an accident at work. If the family doctor is consulted instead and the matter is treated as a private accident, avoidable queries follow later. Every insurance association lists the Durchgangsärzte in its area on its website.
After the report: what the insurance association expects
The report starts the assessment of the insured event. The insurance association clarifies whether an accident at work occurred and may ask questions about the sequence of events. For serious accidents, an inspection by the supervisory officer is added. That brings a second question into focus: what has the business learned from the accident?
In law, the answer is set out in sections 3 and 5 ArbSchG. After an accident, the risk assessment has to be reviewed and, where necessary, adjusted. That can be something very small: a cable bridge, a handrail, a changed cleaning time, an additional point in the next safety training. What matters is that this conclusion is documented. It is exactly what supervisory officers ask about during a walkthrough, and it often also shapes the tone of a letter from the insurance association.
In practice the topic is solved once the reporting route, the first aid documentation, the accident report and the measures derived from it all sit in one place and do not have to be hunted down in an emergency. Safety Club supports office and administrative businesses with an occupational safety specialist on site plus digital, audit-proof documentation. The four-step process shows how getting started works, and we are happy to clear up open questions in an initial consultation.
This article is general guidance and does not replace legal advice on your individual case. What governs is the current version of the SGB VII, ArbSchG and DGUV Regulation 1, together with how your employers' liability insurance association (Berufsgenossenschaft, BG) interprets it.
