A risk assessment is required of every employer with staff, from the trade business to the pure office (section 5 ArbSchG). It is not a one-off formality but the foundation of all occupational safety: only once the hazards are documented can measures be justified. The result must be recorded in writing under section 6 ArbSchG.
Why it is missing most often in offices
In production and skilled trades the hazard is visible: machinery, hazardous substances, loads. In an office that trigger is absent, and from this comes the common conclusion that there is nothing to assess. The Occupational Health and Safety Act, however, does not distinguish by sector; it requires the working conditions of every workstation to be assessed.
In fact office hazards are well documented and significant in number. Slips, trips and falls are the typical accident type in administrative businesses. Added to that are strains that do not show up as accidents but build over years: poor posture at the screen, inadequate lighting, sustained mental stress from work intensification.
What belongs in an office risk assessment
The following areas cover the normal case of an office or administrative business. Each area is worked through per workstation or workstation type, not generically for the business as a whole:
- Screen work and ergonomics: posture, monitor height and distance, keyboard and mouse, lighting, glare, screen breaks. One basis for this is DGUV Information 215-410. Practical detail in Setting up a screen workstation correctly.
- Rooms, routes and the workplace: traffic routes, trip hazards such as loose cables and carpet edges, escape routes and keeping them clear, indoor climate, noise in open-plan areas, storage in shelves and cabinets.
- Electrical equipment: condition and recurring inspection of laptops, power supplies, power strips and kitchen appliances. The test-interval calculator works the intervals out.
- Fire safety: extinguishers and their accessibility, escape and rescue routes, alerting, fire safety helpers. Background in Fire safety in the office.
- First aid: enough first aiders, reachable first-aid supplies, the reporting chain, the notice. See First aid in the office.
- Mental stress: explicitly part of it under section 5 paragraph 3 number 6 ArbSchG. Why this part is regularly missing and how it is surveyed in practice is set out in Mental stress in the risk assessment.
- Specific groups of employees: pregnant and breastfeeding employees, young workers, employees with disabilities. Additional assessments and measures may be required for them.
- Remote and mobile working: where provided for in the business, see Remote work and telework.
Which of these points are already covered and where the gaps are can be worked through with the office safety checklist before the specialist arrives for the first walkthrough. That shortens the appointment considerably.
Who produces it and who remains responsible
The employer is always responsible. This responsibility can be delegated organisationally but not handed over: even where an external specialist produces the assessment, the company management remains responsible for it existing, being current, and the measures being implemented.
In practice both sides work together. The occupational safety specialist brings the method, knowledge of the regulations and an outside view. The business knows its processes, rooms and activities. The occupational physician contributes the occupational-medicine perspective, particularly on mental stress and for specific groups of employees. Where safety officers are appointed, they are involved; an existing works council has co-determination rights.
Starting in four steps
The most common reason no risk assessment exists is not resistance but an unclear starting point. These four steps are enough to begin:
- Record the work areas. List activities and workstation types, not every individual person. In an office that is often just a handful: screen workstation, reception, storage or archive, kitchen, home office.
- Identify the hazards. Work through the points from the section above for each area. Note what was actually found, not what is intended.
- Decide and implement measures. Every measure gets a responsible person and a deadline. Without both it stays a statement of intent. Follow the hierarchy of controls: engineering measures before organisational ones, organisational before personal protective measures.
- Review effectiveness and update. After the deadline, check whether the measure works and record the result. This fourth step is the one most often missing in practice.
A worked office example
To make the required level of detail tangible: an administrative business with 18 employees across two floors, a reception, an archive in the basement and a kitchen on each floor. For the workstation type "open-plan screen workstation" the entries might look like this:
- Hazard: glare from direct sunlight at six window desks from the afternoon onwards. Measure: retrofit glare protection, owner facilities, deadline end of quarter. Effectiveness: check with the people affected once installed.
- Hazard: trip hazard from cables at four standing desks. Measure: cable ducts, owner facilities, deadline four weeks.
- Hazard: escape route in the basement narrowed by stored file boxes. Measure: designate a storage area, mark the escape route, owner archive lead, deadline two weeks. This is the point an inspection notices first.
- Hazard: mental stress from an expectation of availability outside working hours. Measure: put the availability rule in writing, owner management, deadline by the next quarterly review.
Four entries for one workstation type, each with a measure, an owner and a deadline. For the business as a whole, five to seven such workstation types typically come together. That is manageable, but it is considerably more than a cover sheet.
When it must be updated
The Occupational Health and Safety Act sets no fixed interval, but it does set triggers. The assessment must be updated in particular for:
- new or changed workstations, for example through relocation, refurbishment or desk sharing,
- new work equipment or procedures, including purely digital changes that affect strain,
- new activities or changed job scopes,
- after an accident at work or a near miss, see Accidents at work in the office,
- changed regulations or new findings,
- and independently of that on a regular cycle, usually annually in office businesses.
Important for record keeping: updating does not mean overwriting. Record when what was changed. An assessment showing only the current state cannot demonstrate, after an accident, what applied at the time of the accident.
The hierarchy of controls
Not every measure carries the same weight. Section 4 ArbSchG sets out a hierarchy of controls that should be visible in the assessment: eliminate the hazard at source first, then engineering measures, then organisational ones, and only then measures aimed at the individual.
In an office that means: a monitor that is too low is solved by a height-adjustable workstation, not by a reminder to watch your posture. A cable in a traffic route belongs in a duct, not in a training session. Only once technical and organisational means are exhausted do behavioural rules and personal protective equipment follow. An assessment listing training as the only measure inverts this order and rarely holds up to scrutiny.
Storage, access and data protection
The risk assessment is a working document, not an archive record. It should sit where the responsible people can reach it day to day, and be ready to produce during an inspection without a search. A copy in the managing director's inbox does neither.
Three points are regularly overlooked. First, earlier versions should be kept rather than overwritten, so it stays traceable what applied at which point in time. Second, employees have a right to be told the results that concern them; safety training is the usual route for that. Third, depending on the survey method, the section on mental stress contains sensitive information. Surveys must be evaluated so that no conclusions about individuals are possible, which in small teams means reporting only in aggregate.
The most common mistakes in office businesses
- Nothing but a cover sheet. A general statement such as "office work, low risk" is not an assessment but a way of avoiding one.
- Mental stress left out. By far the most common substantive shortcoming.
- Measures without owners and deadlines. This makes the effectiveness review impossible from the outset.
- No update after the relocation. New rooms, old assessment: a classic that is spotted immediately during an inspection.
- Training not connected to it. The results of the assessment are the basis for safety training under section 12 ArbSchG. The training-interval calculator shows when the next one falls due.
How to spot and fix these mistakes in an assessment that already exists is set out in detail in 7 risk assessment mistakes in offices, including a five-step check for your own record.
Safety Club takes on the risk assessment for office and administrative businesses as part of its support, produced by an occupational safety specialist on site and documented in an audit-proof way automatically. What that costs depends mainly on headcount; more on this in What does an occupational safety specialist cost?.
This article is general guidance and does not replace legal advice on your individual case. What governs is the current version of the regulations mentioned, together with how your employers' liability insurance association (Berufsgenossenschaft, BG) interprets it.
