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From Sustainability Program, you can curate the key data points — or metrics — to disclose for Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) or sustainability topics. 

With metrics, you can:

• Collect quantitative and qualitative values to report for topics.
• Reference frameworks and standards to align with stakeholder interests.
• Request and track the data collection of values.

To ensure meaningful sustainability reporting, your metrics — regardless of their values — should follow a common lifecycle.

Step 1. Identify topics to report

As you define your Program, identify the topics that matter — or are "material" — to your company. For each topic you include in your Program, you can add the metrics required to track to report its respective values.

For example, to report your company's environmental risks:

Step 2. Define the metric's details

To help determine the metrics required to disclose a topic, search and browse Sustainability Explorer for related guidance from common frameworks and standards for sustainability reporting. When you add a metric, you can specify the framework content it aligns with in Related Explorer content.

Tip: From Sustainability Explorer, you can review guidelines from multiple frameworks and standards at once.

By aligning with metrics with frameworks and standards in Sustainability Explorer, you ensure your reporting addresses the disparate interests of stakeholders, such as:

• Investors, who track your company's sustainability performance agnostically and compared to your industry peers
• Local and national governments, with regulatory guidelines to ensure sustainability and human services
• Your company's management, with interests in how sustainability-related outcomes translate to tangible activities that impact and influence the organization

In Metric details, you can define additional context about the overall metric and all of its values:

• Description, such as a detailed explanation of the sustainability factor the metric supports or measures
• Program tags, or custom details your organization tracks for a metric, such as company goals it aligns with, or its prioritization based on materiality assessment
• Reference attachments, or files that provide context around the overall metric, such as full PDFs of framework content downloaded from the issuing body or Sustainability Explorer

Step 3. Configure values to collect

To define the values to collect through a metric:

1. From the Configure metric panel, set up the type of values to collect, based on:

   • Their data type — Number, Currency, Percent, Text, or Date

     Note: For a value type of Number, Currency, or Percent, also select its unit of measurement. All of a metric's values share the same type and unit.

   • Whether they require supporting notes or attachments

   • A custom dimension, such as location, business unit, or demographic

     Tip: Program Owners can create and manage the dimensions available for metrics.

   

2. From Values, click Add values, and choose the collection periods — based on a Yearly, Biannually, Quarterly, or Monthly frequency — and any custom dimensional values to collect values for.
   

To learn more, view Configure values for Sustainability Program metrics.

Step 4. Set up data collection

To collect a metric's value, you can:

• Enter it directly in the metric.
• Connect it to a source Spreadsheet or Document.
• Delegate data collection to other workspace members.

If you delegate values to other members, you can create tasks to help ease and track their data collection. When you create a task, you can:

• Assign workspace members to prepare or approve values and their supporting material through a connected source file or the streamlined Workiva Tasks portal.
• Set due dates and provide instructions for the assigned members.

• Choose which values to include.

  Tip: If you collect values through the Workiva Tasks portal, you can include multiple values in the same task to ease data collection. Values collected through a connected source file each require their own separate task.

Therefore, you can set up different assignments for each period throughout the reporting year, and individual dimension values can inherit that same assignment or have their own custom assignments.

To learn more, view Manage metric tasks in Sustainability Program.

Step 5. Collect values

To collect the values to include in sustainability reporting:

• If you create tasks for the values, send them to their assignees to begin data collection. When assignees complete their tasks, the approvers automatically receive tasks to verify the prepared values and supporting material. You can track the status of these tasks from the Program, the metrics, or the metrics' topics.
  

  Tip: From a topic or metric, you can send reminders to assignees or approvers as necessary.

• Otherwise, enter the values directly in Values, including any supporting notes or attachments. 
  

To use the collected values in reporting outputs, such as a sustainability report or a board meeting slide deck:

1. From Wdata, use the Program as a query source to explore and refine its values, such as based on specific dimensions or parameters.
2. Connect the query as the source of Spreadsheets — such as your Factbook — and link their cells to your reporting outputs, or connect the query directly to tables or charts in those outputs' Documents or Presentations.