Do duties have to be transferred?

Yes and no!

In fact, most occupational health and safety duties are already automatically assigned to all managers at the university. These include elementary duties such as

• Responsibility for their own work and research area and the associated rooms
• General duty of care
• Carrying out and documenting the risk assessment
• Duty to instruct employees and students in their own area of responsibility
• etc.

Details are regulated in the following administrative instruction.

Official notification no. 5/2024 from 26.02.2024

Administrative Instruction of the Chancellor on the Implementation of Occupational Health and Safety and Environmental Protection Legislation at TU Dortmund University

In practice, these obligations are automatically transferred to the obligated persons (managers, university lecturers, managing directors, working group leaders, etc. - i.e. all persons with management responsibility) when the employment contract is signed. In this respect, these obligations do not need to be set out again in writing in the form of an additional agreement. Furthermore, they cannot be subsequently rejected.

To put it simply: all those that do not already have to be complied with in accordance with administrative regulations. The question is: does this actually happen?

A few scenarios

University lecturers

The Chancellor's administrative directive (AM No. 5/2024) automatically applies when you take up your post or sign your contract. As there are practically no changes to the conditions for university lecturers during the course of their employment (they have management responsibility for their working group and duty of care as well as responsibility for their area of responsibility from the outset - even if the number of employees or premises change), there is no change to the validity of the administrative directive or their occupational health and safety obligations. A further transfer of duties is therefore not necessary.

Science support staff with special qualifications / expertise

In individual cases, it may happen that managers have and retain general responsibility in their area of responsibility, but in specific cases do not have the necessary specialist knowledge to be able to fulfill their occupational health and safety duties. However, an employee may have the specialist knowledge because he/she has attended appropriate courses. In this case, the employer's obligation under Section 13 (2) ArbSchG can certainly be transferred to employees (without management responsibility).

Case study: Instrumental analysis

It can usually be assumed that university lecturers are specialists in their field of research and therefore also have the relevant expertise to implement occupational health and safety.

However, complex analysis is often carried out and is constantly evolving. It is renewed, expanded and improved, and is ultimately so complex that detailed specialist knowledge is required to operate it. In most cases, academic staff (or some users) familiarize themselves with the subject. University lecturers do not have the time to deal with all the details of all analytical equipment and may therefore lack the expertise to instruct staff in analytics and the associated hazards, for example. In contrast to their own boss, the employees are then the specialists for this analysis and therefore also experts. They could then also assume responsibility for the implementation of occupational health and safety - but also the authority to issue instructions.

Whether a delegation of duties is necessary in this case or whether a transfer of tasks is sufficient is not 100% legally defined. One thing is certain: no delegation of duties without the simultaneous transfer of authority to issue instructions. However, whoever has the responsibility is also (jointly) liable in case of doubt.

The subtle difference

Of course, a line manager can delegate tasks (including occupational health and safety tasks) to employees. This applies to laser safety officers, for example. However, this is

• firstly - a delegation of tasks and not a transfer of duties and
• secondly - the occupational health and safety duties, i.e. implementation, monitoring of effectiveness, etc. remain with the line manager.

Managers merely receive support from their employees in the implementation of occupational health and safety.

A formal transfer of duties (with an emphasis on transfer) can generally only take place from a manager to a manager lower down in the hierarchy. For example, from the chancellor to department heads and from them to heads of department. However, some of the duties are actually transferred. The higher-level manager is thus partially relieved. However, it is important that the duty to monitor the effectiveness of employees' correct performance of their assigned health and safety duties remains with the higher-level manager.

• Project managers of the genetic engineering facilities
• Biological safety officers
• Operators of facilities in which explosive atmospheres can arise
• Operators of facilities that are subject to the Ordinance on Facilities for Handling Substances Hazardous to Water
• Operators of installations subject to the SF 6 Ordinance
• etc.