what percentage of my workforce is flexible or temporary staff

Contract type by main category, no percentage out of thin air

This concerns the share of employees without a permanent employment contract: temporary workers, on-call workers and employees with a fixed-term contract, measured against total headcount or FTE. VSME requests this within the workforce module as a breakdown of the workforce by contract type, usually in two categories: permanent and non-permanent (temporary). Temporary workers who are not on the company's own payroll are sometimes excluded and listed separately if material — for example in strongly seasonal production. When filling in your answer, check whether the customer is asking about in-house staff with temporary contracts, about hired temporary workers, or about both combined; that distinction determines which numerator and denominator you use.

The answer therefore does not exist as a standalone metric in a dossier, but is derived from the HR data you are already using for headcount and gender distribution. If you do not have this breakdown by contract type readily available as standard, that is a reason to confirm "no" or "unknown" instead of entering an estimate — a percentage that cannot be traced back to payroll records will raise more questions in an audit than it answers. The same source data you use for this question is usually also used for the male-female distribution within the workforceso it is efficient to pull both breakdowns from the payroll system at once and place them in the supply chain dossier for reuse.

Where this comes from: VSME Workforce module

The basis for this is in the VSME standard of EFRAG, in the module that covers workforce data; this asks not only for headcount and gender distribution, but also for the distribution by contract type as part of the profile of the employee population. Directive (EU) 2022/2464 does not require this reporting from SMEs themselves, but provides that larger undertakings may request supply chain data — and that is precisely why this appears as a voluntary VSME question in customer portals. Companies that also report collective agreement coverage or minimum wage often find that the staff is covered by a collective labour agreement has a similar origin in HR administration, which makes it convenient to answer these questions in one round.