customer asks about work from home policy in sustainability questionnaire

Working from home policy falls under working conditions, not under a separate VSME data point

VSME has no separate data point for working from home or flexible hours. The question usually comes from a customer format that goes beyond the basic module, or from the broader social section that customers add themselves to their own supply chain questionnaire. In practice, you can best treat it as part of your labour conditions policy, in the same category as the questions you already know about health and safety at work and about the collective agreement under which the staff fall.

If you have no formal working from home policy, then "no" is the factually correct answer — a verbal agreement or incidental discretion is not a policy. If you do have a written regulation (in the staff handbook, a collective agreement provision, or a separate working from home agreement), then that is your evidence. Note the difference between a right to work from home and a discretionary arrangement that varies by manager: many customer formats specifically ask for the former, and a loose practice without an established framework you still answer with "no", even if employees in practice often work from home.

Where this comes from: broader social reporting under the CSRD

The basic module of EFRAG VSME is limited to a fixed set of social indicators — labour conditions, health and safety, diversity — and working from home policy is not listed by name there. Directive (EU) 2022/2464 does leave room for broader social reporting for larger undertakings, and this sometimes translates into what a customer includes in his own questionnaire, separate from what VSME requires as core. If you are uncertain whether your customer means a formal policy document or only the actual practice, it helps to check that difference before you fill in — just as with questions about training hours per employee, where "average" and "established policy" are also often confused.