what is our diversity in management and leadership

Management composition requires a figure, not a policy

This question seeks a breakdown: how many men and women are in the governing or management body, usually expressed as a number or percentage per gender, sometimes broken down by age category. This is different from the question about the male-female distribution within the workforce, which concerns all employees. Do not confuse the two in your chain file: a questionnaire may ask them separately, and an answer about the entire workforce does not address the management question.

If you don't have this figure at hand, it is usually straightforward to obtain: the governing body or management is a small, fixed group, so a count is not a survey but a check of who currently holds those positions. If a fixed register is lacking, then "to be determined" is a more honest answer than an estimate. Confirm in the system only the answer you have verified yourself; if there is doubt about the precise composition of "management" — does a supervisory board count, does an interim manager count — that is something to decide yourself before submitting, we do not fill that in. See also how you a question on diversity in the workforce in general; the approach for the management question is the same, only the target group for the count is smaller.

Basis in VSME, origin in the CSRD chain

This question recurs because the EFRAG VSME standard, the voluntary basic module for non-listed SME enterprises, includes an indicator on the gender distribution in governing and management bodies as part of social information. Larger customers who themselves are subject to CSRD reporting obligations — Directive (EU) 2022/2464 — pass this question on to their suppliers to complete their own chain reporting. This also explains why smaller enterprises increasingly see this question in their own questionnaires: not because they themselves are subject to reporting obligations, but because their customer is.