Businesses are usually unhappy with their occupational safety specialist for five reasons: no walkthrough takes place on site, the documentation stays with the provider, the support hours under DGUV Regulation 2 cannot be traced, sector knowledge for offices and public administration is missing, and nobody is reachable when it matters. All five can be fixed in the contract.
What is striking is what the list does not contain: professional mistakes. The expertise required under section 7 ASiG is examined and rarely the problem. Dissatisfaction arises around how the support is organised: dates, records, availability, transparency. Those points can be settled in the service contract.
One point matters here: the basic duties under section 3 ArbSchG stay with the employer. The occupational safety specialist is appointed under section 1 ASiG to support the employer and does not assume their responsibility. If the risk assessment is missing during an inspection, that is attributed to the business. Weak support is not a comfort problem but a liability risk.
| Reason | How the business notices | Legal core | Remedy in the contract |
|---|---|---|---|
| No walkthrough on site | nobody in the rooms for years, no walkthrough report | section 6 number 3 ASiG (inspect workplaces at regular intervals) | agree walkthrough frequency and a written report explicitly |
| Documentation stays with the provider | records only in the provider's portal, no export | section 6 ArbSchG (documentation duty of the employer) | handover and export in a readable format, also after the contract ends |
| Support hours cannot be traced | flat invoice, no hour statement, no link to the headcount | DGUV Regulation 2, Annex 2 (basic plus business-specific support) | hours stated per visit, split into basic support and additional need |
| No office sector knowledge | templates on machinery and hazardous substances, screen work generic | ArbStättV Annex number 6, section 5 paragraph 3 number 6 ArbSchG | references in your own sector, technical questions in the first meeting |
| Nobody reachable when it matters | no response within 24 hours after an accident | section 193 SGB VII (accident report within 3 days) | named contact, response deadline, cover arrangement |
Reason 1: No walkthrough takes place on site
The walkthrough is not a service extra but a statutory duty. Section 6 number 3 ASiG obliges the occupational safety specialist to inspect the workplaces at regular intervals, report the defects found to the employer and press for their removal. Support provided purely by telephone does not fulfil that duty.
This is the most common trigger of dissatisfaction, and it surfaces late: it becomes visible at the first inspection, when the inspector asks for walkthrough reports. The ASiG prescribes no fixed interval, it speaks of regular intervals. For a single-site office business, a walkthrough every one to two years is common practice, plus visits after a move, a refurbishment or an accident. What matters is the evidence: a walkthrough without a report stating date, findings and deadlines has effectively not happened.
Remedy: walkthrough frequency, the report duty and the tracking of open defects belong in the service contract, not in a service description saying "as required". What an inspection asks for is covered in A letter from the Berufsgenossenschaft.
Reason 2: The documentation stays with the provider
The documentation duty under section 6 ArbSchG falls on the employer, not on the service provider. The employer must have documents showing the result of the risk assessment, the measures decided and their review. If they exist only in the provider's portal, the business does not have them in law.
The damage shows up at the worst moment. After termination the portal access is switched off, and with it the risk assessment, the training records and years of test records. The new provider starts a new file instead of continuing one: the business pays the initial effort twice.
Occupational safety documentation is fit for inspection when it is complete, dated, signed, findable and kept up to date: five characteristics that all depend on the business having access.
Remedy: an explicit clause on the handover of all records in a readable format, at any time and after the contract ends, plus deletion at the provider and a data processing agreement for personal data. The duties quick-check shows which records accumulate at all.
Reason 3: The support hours cannot be traced
Support hours are the annual hours that DGUV Regulation 2 requires the occupational safety specialist and the occupational physician to spend on a business. They consist of basic and business-specific support. For support group III, which covers offices, basic support amounts to 0.5 hours per employee per year for both roles combined.
Dissatisfaction here comes not from high prices but from a missing derivation: a flat invoice without an hour statement cannot be checked. Under Annex 2 of DGUV Regulation 2, at least 20 percent of basic support must fall to each of the two roles.
| Employees | Total basic support per year | Specialist share at a 60 percent focus | Occupational physician share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 12 | 6.0 hours | 3.6 hours | 2.4 hours |
| 35 | 17.5 hours | 10.5 hours | 7.0 hours |
| 80 | 40.0 hours | 24.0 hours | 16.0 hours |
An office business with 35 employees has 10.5 specialist hours per year on paper, roughly one working day plus a walkthrough. Once that is known, the discussion is no longer about price but about how those hours are used. Business-specific support follows the trigger: a move, new workstations, remote work.
Remedy: an hour statement per visit and an offer naming basic and business-specific support separately. The starting figure comes from the support-hours calculator, the pricing logic from What does an occupational safety specialist cost?.
Reason 4: Sector knowledge for offices and administration is missing
The hazard profile of an office business is narrow and deep, not broad. What matters is display screen work under Annex number 6 ArbStättV, mental stress under section 5 paragraph 3 number 6 ArbSchG, slips and falls, indoor climate under ASR A3.5 and A3.6, first aid and fire safety. Anyone from manufacturing brings templates for other hazards.
It is visible in the risk assessment. If machine safety, noise and hazardous substances run for pages while display screen work gets two lines, an outside template has been adopted. Worse than the irrelevant paragraph is the missing one: the assessment of mental stress is often the most relevant hazard in offices and is almost always absent from manufacturing templates.
A specialist with office sector experience and a generalist hold the same expertise under section 7 ASiG, but they have handled very different numbers of the same cases. Confidence in an inspection grows out of repetition, out of many similar businesses rather than many different sectors.
Remedy: in the first meeting, ask for references in your own sector and put two technical questions, on assessing mental stress and on home workstations. The answers separate experience from sales routine. Whether external support is required at all: Does an office need an occupational safety specialist?
Reason 5: Nobody is reachable when it matters
Availability decides the value of the support, because occupational safety runs on deadlines. Under section 193 SGB VII the employer must report an accident at work to the accident insurance institution if the insured person is unfit for work for more than three days as a result. Waiting three weeks for a call back means having a contract, not support.
Two constellations regularly lead to dissatisfaction: the anonymous hotline, where every call restarts the description of the case, and the missing cover, where the responsible specialist is on holiday or ill and the contract says nothing about who takes over. Time pressure also arises without an accident: an announced inspection, a notice of pregnancy under MuSchG, or a near miss with safety training under section 12 ArbSchG.
Remedy: a named contact with a direct number, a committed response deadline for urgent cases, and a written cover arrangement. What to do after an accident is set out in Accidents at work in the office.
Renegotiate, or change provider?
Not every reason justifies a change. The cause decides: organisational shortcomings can be renegotiated, structural gaps cannot.
- Renegotiate when only the organisation is missing. Missing hour statement, unclear walkthrough frequency, no named contact: solvable in one conversation and a contract addendum.
- Renegotiate with a deadline when the documentation sits with the provider. Request handover in writing. If nothing arrives, that request is the first step of a change.
- Change provider when no walkthrough has taken place for years. The duty under section 6 number 3 ASiG is structurally not met, and the evidence cannot be recreated later.
- Change provider when sector knowledge is missing. A provider using manufacturing templates for an office business will do the same next year.
- Change provider when nobody was reachable in an emergency. One lapse can be explained, a second is a statement about the provider's structure.
Changing provider in five steps
A change is uncritical when the order is right. The most common mistake is giving notice first: after that, access to the records is gone.
- Request and secure the records. Ask in writing for the risk assessment, walkthrough reports, safety training records, test records and hour statements while the contract still runs.
- Check the contract and the notice periods. Read term, notice period and renewal clause, because the appointment under section 6 ASiG must not lapse without a handover.
- Compare offers on the same basis. Have the support hours stated separately for basic and business-specific support, plus walkthrough frequency, cover and travel costs. What to look for in detail is in Choosing a safety specialist: 7 criteria.
- Appoint the new specialist and hand over. Written appointment with the duties under section 6 ASiG, then a handover date with a walkthrough.
- Terminate the old contract and move the documentation. Give notice only after the successor is appointed, then move the records into a system of your own.
One point holds across all five reasons: under section 8 paragraph 1 ASiG the safety specialist is not bound by instructions when applying professional expertise. Professional judgements are not negotiable, and rightly so. Negotiable are dates, availability, reporting format, hour statements and handover of the documentation.
For offices and public administration, Safety Club nails down those points: an occupational safety specialist on site plus digital, audit-proof documentation that belongs to the business. Getting started is shown in the process in four steps; we assess an existing arrangement in an initial conversation.
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 and DGUV Regulation 2, together with how the accident insurance institution that covers you interprets them.
