Occupational risk profiles among public officials in Korea: A survey-based application of a first-tier risk assessment tool

Public officials perform diverse administrative, public-facing, emergency, and safety–critical tasks, yet their occupational risk profiles have rarely been characterized across actual job functions. In Korea, public officials have historically remained partly outside core occupational safety and health requirements, and systematic evidence on their occupational risk profiles across diverse job functions has been limited. This study applied the Public Officials’ Occupational Risk Assessment (PORA) tool to 36,779 Korean public officials to screen perceived occupational risks and identify occupation- and job-function-specific high-risk patterns. Respondents assessed exposure frequency and intensity for 24 occupational risk factors across psychological, organizational, ergonomic, physical, chemical, and biological domains. Risk scores were calculated as the product of frequency and intensity, and high-risk responses were defined as “high” or “very high” according to the PORA risk matrix. Prolonged sitting showed the highest mean risk score and high-risk prevalence, followed by public-facing work, fast work pace, time pressure, emotional stress, awkward posture, and repetitive upper-limb work. Frequency–intensity comparisons showed that some risks were driven by frequent exposure, whereas event-based psychological hazards received lower time-proportion-based frequency ratings but relatively higher intensity ratings. Occupation-specific logistic regression showed distinct profiles: general service officials were characterized by prolonged sitting and time pressure, police officers by broad psychological, ergonomic, and physical hazards, and firefighters by physical, chemical, biological, and emergency-response-related hazards. Job-function heatmaps and hierarchical clustering further revealed heterogeneous risk profiles across 22 main job functions. These findings highlight the need for job-function-based, participatory, and risk-prioritized occupational safety and health management in public organizations.