According to Section 22 of the German Social Security Code (SGB VII), safety officers must be appointed in companies with more than 20 employees.
Chairs, administrative areas and central operating units must be considered individually. In administrative areas (office work), one safety officer can be appointed for every 30 employees. However, the workplaces should be located in close proximity to each other. For chairs and central operating units, the following applies: the type and level of risk, the number of employees and the proximity of the workplaces determine the number of safety officers required.
However, some chairs do not have 20 employees and it is organisationally difficult to assign one employee due to the large number of other obligations. However, since five chairs with four employees each also result in 20 employees, the legal obligation must not be ignored. It may be possible to find a solution at institute level.
Our accident insurance provider, Unfallkasse Brandenburg (UKBB) in Frankfurt (O.), is responsible for the training and further training of safety officers. Registration is carried out by the responsible occupational safety specialist.

Safety officers are appointed with the involvement of the staff council. The certificate of appointment is presented after successful participation in a training seminar.
Safety officers can resign from office at any time or ask for a vote of confidence.
There is no liability for safety officers, as their duties are "honorary".

The list of all safety officers can be found on the intranet under Contact/Emergency call.../Safety officers.

All active safety officers should register on the mailing list for safety officers in order to receive information on the topic of occupational safety, dates for events on the topic of occupational safety and to exchange information with other safety officers in general.

Further information on safety officers can be found in DGUV Information 211-042 "Safety Officers".