Almost every second employee across Europe is exposed to psychological hazards at work, according to the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (EU-OSHA). The figure — 45 percent — sits alongside another troubling statistic: only 45 percent of workers say anyone has ever asked them about the stress-related aspects of their job.
Roughly 44 percent report intense time pressure or overload. Work-related depression costs the European Union more than €100 billion a year in absenteeism, lost productivity and health and social follow-on costs, the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI) has calculated.
Those numbers frame a broader push by regulators and safety professionals to treat mental strain as seriously as physical danger. EU-OSHA director William Cockburn has called for psychological problems in the workplace to be given the same weight as physical hazards, describing a thorough risk assessment as the first and fundamental step in every case. Esther Lynch, general secretary of the European Trade Union Confederation, made a similar point: prevention has to start right at the workplace.
A thorough risk assessment is the foundation of any safe workplace — yet many employers still rely on guesswork. A free toolkit gives you 41 ready-to-use templates and checklists covering fire safety, manual handling, first aid and lone working, so nothing slips through the cracks. Download the free Risk Assessment Toolkit
The European Commission has launched a campaign under the banner of healthy workplaces. Roxana Mînzatu, its executive vice-president for social rights and employment, framed the initiative as a benefit for everyone involved.
What German Law Actually Requires
The legal machinery behind workplace risk assessment — known in German as Gefährdungsbeurteilung — is the subject of current specialist guidance, including a report published on 16 October 2026 by the occupational safety portal arbeitsschutzdigital.de. The existing rules, it notes, demand close coordination between the various players inside a company so that risks can be captured systematically and handled in a legally sound way.
At the centre of that effort sits a statutory duty of cooperation between company doctors and occupational safety specialists. It is anchored in the 1974 Occupational Safety Act (Section 10 ASiG) and the 1996 Occupational Health and Safety Act (Section 3(2) ArbSchG), and spelled out further in Sections 2 and 6 ASiG.
Firms with more than 20 employees must also set up an occupational safety committee under Section 11 ASiG. Under Section 10(3) ASiG, the cooperation extends to safety officers appointed under Section 22 of the Social Code VII, to fire protection, first aid and evacuation assistants under Section 10 ArbSchG, and to immission and incident officers under the 5th Federal Immission Control Ordinance (5. BImSchV).
Joint duties for safety engineers and medical staff include developing integrated concepts for risk assessments under Sections 5 and 6 ArbSchG. They also cover workplace inspections under Section 7 of the Occupational Medical Precaution Ordinance (ArbMedVV), the drafting of work and procedure instructions, and training and briefings under Section 12 ArbSchG.
Occupational medical precaution, governed by the ArbMedVV together with Occupational Medicine Rule AMR 3.3, makes one point plain: medical measures may only supplement technical and organisational safeguards. They must never replace them.
Equipment, Leases and Operator Duties
Beyond staffing and organisation, detailed requirements apply to technical equipment. Risk assessments for work equipment must follow the Industrial Safety Ordinance (BetrSichV) and begin before the equipment is even selected or purchased.
Where buildings are leased, it must be settled in binding terms whether landlord or tenant carries the operator obligations. If no legal provisions govern the placing of a piece of work equipment on the market, Annex 1 No. 4 and Sections 4, 5, 6, 8 and 9 BetrSichV apply.
Under Section 6(2) sentence 1 BetrSichV, the employer is responsible for keeping protective and safety devices permanently functional and for preventing any tampering with them.
From cooperation duties to equipment checks, employers carry a wide span of safety obligations — and inspectors expect the paperwork to match. A free toolkit bundles 41 checklists and templates that let you document each duty as you go, so you are never caught short. Get your free Risk Assessment Toolkit
