customer asks how we exclude child labour from suppliers

Child labor is a supply chain risk, not an in-house check

The question is almost always about your supply chain, not about your own personnel. When someone asks whether you "exclude" child labor, they want to know whether you map and address risks among suppliers — not just whether your own payroll administration is in order. This makes it a question about supply chain policy and how you translate that policy to your suppliers, with a code of conduct and monitoring of it.

In practice, the customer asks about three things: do you have a policy that addresses child labor and other human rights risks, do you document this in a code of conduct that suppliers must sign or endorse, and is there a way for someone — an employee, a supplier, a resident — to report a violation. Without these three building blocks, "yes, we exclude child labor" is a promise without substantiation, and that is exactly why you do not propose an answer here if the file contains only a statement of intent. If you only have an internal code of conduct that suppliers do not know about or sign, that is a different answer than a code that has been enforced contractually. For the substantiation of the policy itself, human rights policy in the supply chain is the question that comes closest; for the instrument with which you enforce that policy with suppliers, supplier code of conduct is relevant, and the reporting channel itself stands apart as a separate question under reporting violations via a fixed channel.

Where this appears in VSME

The VSME core module of EFRAG asks SMEs about policies, practices and initiatives regarding human rights in the value chain, including child labor and forced labor as explicitly mentioned risks. The basis for this lies in Directive (EU) 2022/2464, which sets the scope of sustainability reporting within which VSME functions as a voluntary, simplified format for non-listed companies. For the way you incorporate this into a broader supply chain questionnaire, working conditions further in the supply chain aligns with the same source data as this question.