Specialised occupational safety support gives office and administrative businesses three advantages: the risk profile in an office is narrow but deep rather than broad, the support hours in support group III sit at 0.5 hours per employee per year and thus far below construction and production, and audit readiness grows out of repeating the same cases.
Note: this is an opinion piece. Safety Club supports office and administrative businesses only and is therefore a provider of one of the models described here. The three reasons are grounded in the legal position and in inspection practice, but the weighting is ours. The section on the limits of this model sits in the article on purpose, not in the small print.
Sector focus is a provider's restriction to one sector group, for office and administration to support group III of DGUV Regulation 2. Legally, sector focus is not a requirement: the qualification under section 7 ASiG applies regardless of sector, and there is no per-sector licence. The difference arises in the work, not in what is permissible.
| Support group | Basic support per employee per year | Typical businesses |
|---|---|---|
| Group I | 2.5 hours | main construction trades, businesses with high risk |
| Group II | 1.5 hours | many production and processing businesses |
| Group III | 0.5 hours | office, administration, consulting, insurance |
The hourly values cover the occupational safety specialist and the occupational physician together, with at least 20 percent falling to each role. The binding allocation follows the business's economic activity code in Annex 2 of DGUV Regulation 2, not a self-assessment. Which accident insurance institution is responsible is covered in What is the DGUV, and which institution covers offices?.
Reason 1: The risk profile in an office is narrow but deep
An office business has few types of hazard, but depth in each of them. The recurring ones are screen work under Annex number 6 ArbStättV, mental stress under section 5 paragraph 3 number 6 ArbSchG, working from home, traffic routes and trip hazards, electrical equipment, plus first aid and fire safety. That list is short and repeats itself in almost every business.
Breadth helps little there. Someone who has mastered machinery, hazardous substances, noise and fall protection brings knowledge an office does not need, and has to build up the two topics with the greatest practical weight from scratch: screen work and mental stress. Those two are the demanding ones, because neither can be established by looking around a room; both require workstation analysis and a survey.
The difference becomes visible in the templates. A risk assessment from production covers machinery, hazardous substances and personal protective equipment across pages and screen work in a single sentence. Carried over into an office, the result is an assessment that formally exists and factually misses the business. Structure and minimum content are described in Risk assessment in the office.
Depth shows in the example of mental stress. What is required is an assessment per activity with a result, measures derived from it and a check on effectiveness, not a tick in a box. Anyone who has run that survey repeatedly in administrative businesses knows the typical findings, the questionnaire thresholds and the point at which anonymity in small teams no longer holds. How it works in practice is set out in Mental stress in the risk assessment.
Reason 2: Support group III and its support hours differ sharply from construction and production
Basic support in support group III amounts to 0.5 hours per employee per year for the occupational safety specialist and the occupational physician together, whereas support group I has 2.5 hours. An office business therefore has one fifth of the hours of a construction company of the same size. Support in group III is not a smaller construction project but a different type of business.
| Employees | Group III (office), both roles | of which at least the safety specialist | Group I for comparison |
|---|---|---|---|
| 12 | 6.0 hours | 1.2 hours | 30.0 hours |
| 35 | 17.5 hours | 3.5 hours | 87.5 hours |
| 80 | 40.0 hours | 8.0 hours | 200.0 hours |
The real consequence follows from those figures: in an office business with 35 employees, the occupational safety specialist has at least 3.5 hours of basic support per year on paper, plus the business-specific support from the catalogue of tasks in Annex 2. At that scale, preparation decides the outcome. A provider arriving with finished office templates, a known question set and a practised walkthrough routine spends the hours on findings and measures. A provider who has to get up to speed spends them on basics.
The support hours in Annex 2 apply in standard support; up to 50 employees the Unternehmermodell under Annex 3 of DGUV Regulation 2 is permitted instead. Your own starting figure and the split between the two roles come from the support-hours calculator. One point matters when assessing a quote: a flat fee without that derivation is neither comparable nor verifiable later, see Choosing a safety specialist: 7 criteria.
Reason 3: Audit readiness grows out of repeating the same cases
Audit readiness is the state in which an inspector from the accident insurance institution receives every required record complete, dated and signed. It does not come from expertise alone but from repetition: a provider that mostly supports office businesses has produced the same twenty records and applied the same thresholds hundreds of times.
In office and administration the thresholds are always the same. A safety officer must be appointed under section 22 SGB VII from 50 regular employees onwards since the amendment of 29 May 2026, and between 20 and 49 only where there is a particular risk to life and health. An occupational safety committee is mandatory under section 11 ASiG above 20 employees and meets at least once per calendar quarter. Fire safety helpers are set as a rule at 5 percent of employees under ASR A2.2. First aiders are set under section 26 DGUV Regulation 1 at one person with 2 to 20 insured persons present, and with more than 20 present at least 5 percent of those present in administrative and retail businesses. Portable office equipment is tested under DGUV Regulation 3 usually every 24 months.
Anyone applying those figures daily does not have to look them up, and does not miss them when the business grows past a threshold. The duties quick-check shows which duties apply at a given headcount in a few minutes.
There is one further point that is easily overlooked: for many office and administrative businesses the VBG is the responsible accident insurance institution. That means not only the duties repeat, but also the questions, the forms and the expectations about the form of the records. A provider with a sector focus works regularly with the same institution, whereas a provider covering all sectors deals with nine trade accident insurance institutions and varying inspection practice.
Where sector focus does not fit
Focus is not an advantage in itself, and in three situations it is the wrong cut. These cases belong in the article because they mark the limit of the argument.
- Mixed sites. As soon as a workshop, a warehouse with racking equipment, a laboratory or production floor sits alongside the office, the risk profile is broader. Experience with machinery, hazardous substances and internal traffic then counts for more than routine in screen work.
- Support groups I and II. Construction, production and high-risk businesses need depth where their hours are. A provider focused on offices is the wrong partner for them, whatever the price.
- An in-house safety department. Beyond the size at which an employed occupational safety specialist is fully occupied, the internal solution usually works out better. External support then makes sense as an addition for specialist topics, not as the base model.
Does specialised support fit your business?
The decision rests on three features: the support group, the types of area on the site, and whether the qualification is available in house. Headcount alone does not settle it.
| Starting position | Model that suggests itself |
|---|---|
| pure office site, group III, no qualification in house | provider focused on office and administration |
| office plus workshop, warehouse or laboratory | provider with a broad profile, or two responsibilities |
| group I or II, production or construction | provider with experience in that support group |
| qualification available in house, time is the problem | in-house specialist plus external input on specialist topics |
| several office sites in different regions | provider with a presence on site at every location |
Checking in four steps whether the support fits the business
The check takes about 30 minutes and needs three documents: the notice from the accident insurance institution, the last walkthrough report and the risk assessment.
- Establish the support group. Read the business's economic activity code from the accident insurance institution's notice and look up in Annex 2 of DGUV Regulation 2 which support group applies and how many basic support hours per employee per year follow from it.
- Recalculate the support hours. Basic support equals headcount multiplied by the hourly value of the support group; then check the split between the occupational safety specialist and the occupational physician, with at least 20 percent falling to each role.
- Read the last walkthrough report. Check whether screen work, mental stress, working from home and traffic routes appear as separate items, or whether the report mainly deals with topics from production and warehousing.
- Check where the templates come from. Go through the risk assessment samples: if machinery, hazardous substances and noise are covered in detail and screen work only in general terms, the template comes from another sector.
If the check comes out negative on several points, that is no reason to terminate at once. The next step is a conversation with the appointed occupational safety specialist about the two topics furthest behind, usually mental stress and working from home, with dates and named responsibilities. Only if that has no effect is it worth looking at the term and the notice period.
Safety Club settled on office and administrative businesses for these three reasons rather than on all sectors: an occupational safety specialist on site plus digital, audit-proof documentation that belongs to the business. Who stands behind it and why we chose this cut is set out on About us; we assess your case 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 ASiG, ArbSchG, ArbStättV and DGUV Regulation 2, together with how the accident insurance institution that covers you interprets it.
