enter percentage of flexible workers in customer questionnaire

Share of flexible workers: headcount and contract type determine the outcome

The requested percentage is usually the number of employees without a permanent contract, divided by the total number of employees, measured on a single reference date or as an average over the year. "Flexible" typically includes: fixed-term, on-call, temporary workers on the payroll of a staffing agency but working for you, and sometimes also zero-hours contracts listed separately. VSME requests basic data on the workforce by contract type and gender in the base module; some customer formats break this down further than the standard itself does, so check whether your customer uses their own definition of "flexible" before you take the figure from an HR report that uses a different scope.

If you do not have an exact percentage, the most honest approach is a number instead of a percentage, or a range if your system allows it — a well-documented "approximately" is better than a false-precision figure you cannot justify in an audit. Temporary workers are often the trickiest category: some customers want them counted in the numerator, others explicitly not, because they are not on your payroll. That distinction is linked to whether the workforce is covered by a collective labour agreement, because temporary workers usually follow the collective agreement of the staffing agency, not that of the client company. If you are uncertain whether a category counts, provide the breakdown rather than a single combined figure — that makes it traceable for the customer what is and is not included.

Where this comes from: VSME base module and the CSRD scope

The VSME base module governs the personnel data that, even independently of a formal CSRD obligation, is used as a voluntary standard for SME undertakings, and many customer portals build their own questionnaire on that structure. Directive (EU) 2022/2464 imposes the reporting obligation on larger undertakings in the chain, and they translate their own obligation into questions to suppliers such as yourself — which is why a format varies from customer to customer, even though the underlying source is often the same standard. Figures on contract type are substantively close to whether all employees receive at least the statutory minimum wage, because customers often place both in the same section on working conditions.