The cost of an occupational safety specialist does not come from a price list but from a calculation: support hours times hourly rate. The hours are set by DGUV Regulation 2. Office businesses fall into the cheapest support group III with 0.5 hours of basic support per employee and year. Once you know this logic, you can compare quotes.
The one factor that drives almost everything: support hours
DGUV Regulation 2 sorts businesses into three support groups by risk and assigns each group a fixed share of hours per employee and year. Office and administrative businesses sit in group III, the lowest level. The figure there is 0.5 hours per employee and year for basic support.
What matters is what this figure covers: it applies to basic support by the occupational safety specialist and the occupational physician together. The two share the allowance. How it is split is decided within the business, with at least 20 percent going to each side. A business with many screen workstations and little occupational-medicine demand will sensibly weight it towards the specialist.
On top of basic support comes business-specific support. This is not a flat figure but follows actual need: a relocation, new workstations, an accident, the introduction of remote work. In a stable office business this share is small, but it is not zero.
The support-hours calculator adds the hours up for your business in seconds, including the split between specialist and physician.
Three office businesses worked through
The examples below show basic support under support group III. The hourly rate is deliberately left as a variable, because it varies considerably by region, provider and scope. Put in the rate from a concrete quote and you have your annual cost.
- Small office, 8 employees: 8 times 0.5 hours gives 4.0 hours of basic support per year for specialist and physician combined. With a 60 percent weighting on the specialist, that is 2.4 hours specialist and 1.6 hours physician. That is so little that the initial effort in year one clearly exceeds the ongoing hours.
- Mid-sized office, 25 employees: 25 times 0.5 hours gives 12.5 hours per year. At a 60 percent weighting that is 7.5 hours specialist and 5.0 hours physician. At this size the threshold for the occupational safety committee also applies, above 20 employees; safety officers are only required from 50 since May 2026.
- Larger office, 60 employees: 60 times 0.5 hours gives 30.0 hours per year, so at a 60 percent weighting 18.0 hours specialist and 12.0 hours physician. From this size the Unternehmermodell is no longer available; it ends at 50 employees.
Two things stand out. First, the hour requirement of an office business is small. A 60-person administration needs less than one working week of specialist time per year. Second, costs scale linearly with headcount while the initial effort does not. That is why the first invoice is almost always the highest.
The costs that arise alongside basic support
A common misconception is that appointing a specialist settles the topic financially. In fact the specialist triggers obligations that cost money of their own and are not part of the support contract. Budget for them from the start and there are no surprises later.
- First-aider training. In administrative businesses, at least 5 percent of the employees present at the same time must be trained as first aiders above 20 people present; below that, one person is enough. Training must be refreshed every two years. The employers' liability insurance association usually covers the course, but not the time away from work. The first-aider calculator shows how many people this means for you.
- Fire safety helpers. Under ASR A2.2, 5 percent of the employees present is generally regarded as sufficient, but at least one person. The training is chargeable and repeated periodically. Work it out with the fire safety helper calculator; background in Fire safety in the office.
- Testing portable electrical equipment. The recurring inspection under DGUV Regulation 3 covers every laptop, every power strip and every kettle. In an office that quickly adds up to several hundred items. The test-interval calculator works the intervals out.
- First-aid supplies. First-aid kits under ASR A4.3 must be present, reachable and within their expiry date. The requirement depends on business type and headcount; estimate it with the first-aid kit calculator.
Individually these items are manageable, but together they are not negligible. More important than their exact size is that they appear in the budget at all: they arise regardless of which support model you choose.
Hourly billing or a package price
Freelance specialists often bill by the hour. At first that looks cheap and transparent, but it has two drawbacks for office businesses: annual costs are hard to plan because every occasion is billed on top, and the documentation often stays with the business.
A package price bundling basic support, risk assessment, safety training and documentation is usually more transparent and cheaper in the end, because no work is done twice and the record keeping runs alongside. What matters is that the contract states what is included and what is not.
In-house specialist, external specialist or Unternehmermodell
Office businesses have three options. The decision almost always comes down to the number of hours needed.
- Hire your own specialist: only sensible once demand permanently fills at least a part-time role. At 0.5 hours per employee and year that would be a business with several hundred employees. Add training costs, the duty to keep qualifications current, and the cover problem during holidays and sickness. For an office with 25 or 60 employees this does not work out.
- Engage an external specialist: you pay only for the hours actually needed, the qualification and keeping it current sit with the provider, and cover is the provider's problem. For office businesses this is generally the cheapest option with the least administrative effort. How that support works in detail is set out on the page external occupational safety specialist.
- Unternehmermodell: permitted for up to 50 employees. Instead of a permanently appointed specialist, owners qualify themselves and obtain advice as needed. Direct spending falls noticeably while your own time commitment rises: training, refreshers, implementation on your own responsibility. Anyone who puts a realistic value on that time often ends up with a less clear-cut answer than it first looks. More on this in The Unternehmermodell under DGUV Regulation 2.
How to recognise a sound quote
Four questions separate a comparable quote from one that gets expensive later:
- Is the support group stated, and is it group III? Anyone placing an office business in group II is calculating with three times the hours.
- Are basic support and business-specific support shown separately?
- Is the initial effort of the first year quantified on its own?
- Is it clear who owns the documentation and whether you can take it with you if you change provider?
If a letter from the employers' liability insurance association has just arrived, it is worth running the duties quick-check before comparing quotes. It shows which obligations actually apply at your headcount, so you do not buy services you do not need.
Safety Club bundles complete support for office and administrative businesses into one plannable contract, with an occupational safety specialist on site. Request a no-obligation quote.
This article is general guidance and does not replace legal advice on your individual case. What governs is the current version of the ASiG and DGUV Regulation 2, together with how your employers' liability insurance association (Berufsgenossenschaft, BG) interprets it.
