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The European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) help companies in the European Union (EU) — including EU-based subsidiaries of International companies — comply with the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) for Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) or sustainability reporting.

To help align your reporting with the quantitative and qualitative requirements of the ESRS, you can contact your Workiva Customer Success Manager (CSM) to learn how to supplement your workspace with additional templates.

Note: Implementation services are required to set up these supplemental templates and files in your workspace; additional costs may apply. For details, contact your implementation partner.

These templates include:

• Gap assessment spreadsheet, where you can identify any gaps in data collection toward ESRS topics your company deems material
• ESRS datapoint accelerator spreadsheet, to identify ESRS datapoints related to gaps identified and help ease the creation of corresponding Program metrics to resolve gaps

Note: Workiva offers two versions of these templates, based on either the ESRS Delegated Act of 2023 or the draft simplified ESRS.

Tip: If your metrics are already aligned with the ESRS Delegated Act of 2023, download the ESRS Transition Accelerator from Workiva Marketplace to update them based on the simplified ESRS. To learn more, view Prepare for draft simplified European Sustainability Reporting Standards with ESRS Transition Accelerator.

Step 1. Map ESRS and double-materiality results

From Assessments , your company can use templates to assess the double-materiality of ESRS topics based on key stakeholders' perspectives. After you collect the results of these assessments, you can identify the topics that matter most to your company and focus on their related gaps. 

To start the gap assessment, refresh these sheets' incoming connections from the Connections panel of the Gap assessment spreadsheet:

• User list, to update the spreadsheet with available workspace members who may be able to lead efforts to resolve any gaps

• Step 1a. Double material and ESRS mapping, to update the spreadsheet with the results of the double-materiality assessment performed with the Assessments templates

  Note: If you perform a double-materiality assessment outside of Assessments, manually update the Double materiality and ESRS mapping sheet based on your results.

• Step 1b. ESRS framework, to update the spreadsheet with any Program metrics already aligned with ESRS content

Step 2. Perform gap assessment

Based on your double-materiality assessment, determine how well your company can meet the disclosure and application requirements for the ESRS:

• Disclosure requirements define what to disclose for a standard
• Application requirements define how to report the disclosure, including its required formulas and table layouts

From each standard's sheet in the ESRS assessments section of the Gap assessment spreadsheet, review its disclosures and assess any gaps.

Review ESRS disclosures

1. In Pillar, review the disclosure's type:
   
   • Governance, for governance (GOV) disclosure requirements
   • Strategy, for strategy and business model (SBM) requirements
   • IRO, for sustainability impacts, risks and opportunities (IRO) requirements
   • Metrics and targets, for data- and goal-related application requirements (ARs) — also known as minimum disclosure requirements (MDRs)
2. If assessing gaps based on the ESRS Delegated Act, review:

   • Content type, for whether the disclosure is additional context — such as guidance — or a voluntary or mandatory data point

     Tip: If a disclosure is a data point with both voluntary and mandatory requirements, select Data point — Partially voluntary and mandatory.

     Tip: To help focus on only gaps for reported data points, the ESRS assessment section automatically grays out disclosures with a Content type of Context.

   • Value category, for the type of disclosure required — such as Qualitative or Quantitative
3. Review whether the disclosure maps to a topic or an impact, risk, or opportunity (IRO) identified as material by your DMA results.
   
4. If you choose to not report a material disclosure, select Yes in Disclosure omission, and enter an explanation for the omission.
5. In Materiality results, review any material topic or IRO the disclosure maps to, if applicable.
   

Analyze disclosures for gaps

1. If you already report the disclosure (even only partially), enter details about what's disclosed in Current disclosure, and where it's disclosed in Current disclosure source.
   

2. In Gap, select whether the disclosure has a gap — and if so, whether it's a full or partial gap — based on the Current disclosure, related Program metric, and any other sources.

   Tip: If a disclosure maps to a metric, you can view its ID and name in Existing metric code and Existing metric name, respectively.

3. If a gap exists:

   • In Gap reasoning, enter an explanation of why the gap exists.
   • In Gap type, select what's needed to resolve the gap — Data, Processes, Controls, Governance, or Disclosure.
   • If assessing gaps based on the ESRS Delegated Act, select the type of disclosure needed to resolve the gap — Quantitative, Qualitative, or Semi-qualitative — in Disclosure nature.

   Note: If no gap exists, select No gap in Gap type to gray out the disclosure.

Plan to close gaps

For each data point, plan how to resolve any gaps:

1. In Reporting cycle, select the first year you plan to report the disclosure.
   
2. In Action, select the step to take to resolve the gap — such as Legal review, Regulatory interpretation, or Data gathering.
3. In Responsible team/function and Assisting function, enter the primary and secondary teams or functions — respectively — to resolve the gap.
4. In Gap lead, select the workspace member to lead the effort to resolve the gap.

Tip: To resolve a gap that requires data gathering, align its disclosure with a metric (if necessary), and assign the gap lead as the metric value's Assignee.

After you assess your material standards' gaps, from the Connections panel, select Outgoing , and click Refresh .

Step 3. Analyze or visualize gap assessment results

To help identify gaps to resolve for ESRS, review the Analyze assessment results or Visualize results and progress section.

Tip: To update these sections with the latest results of the gap assessment, from the Connections panel, select Incoming , and click Refresh .

• For the full results of the gap assessment, review the Analyze assessment results section.
  
  From this section, you can view results for:

  • All ESRS content
  • Only material disclosures, based on topic — Environmental, Social, or Governance
  • Only mandatory or voluntary data points, by gap type

  Tip: The Analyze assessment results sheet includes all results of the gap assessment by default. Apply filters to column headers as necessary to focus on only specific results.

• For a summary of the gap assessment, review the Visualize results and progress section.
  
  From this section, you can view:

  • ESRS breakdown, which summarizes the materiality of ESRS disclosures by their requirements, data points, and omissions 

    Note: For completeness, the ESRS breakdown sheet includes ESRS 2: General disclosures, which is mandatory and therefore not subject to materiality.

  • Gap assessment progress, which summarizes of the percentage complete across all stages of the gap assessment — overall, and for each standard
  • Gap assessment results, which summarizes the gaps identified by the assessment — overall, and for each standard, pillar, gap type, and disclosure nature

  Tip: The Visualize results and progress sheet includes common breakdowns of the gap assessment results by default. You can customize the breakdowns as necessary, such as to break down results by location or other criteria.

Tip: From the ESRS Readiness dashboard presentation included with the templates, you can track the progress of gaps and analyze their reconciliation by company function or topic.

Step 4. Create Program metrics to resolve gaps

Based on the results of the gap assessment, you can create metrics in Sustainability Program, such as to help gather data or responses needed to resolve gaps. The ESRS datapoint accelerator spreadsheet automatically provides the details necessary to create metrics for the datapoints — as identified by the European Financial Reporting Advisory Group (EFRAG) — that apply to the identified gaps.

Tip: From Sustainability Explorer, you can also create a Readiness Assessment for the ESRS. From the Readiness Assessment, you can then create tasks and Program metrics as needed to resolve gaps identified for disclosures.

To create metrics for these datapoints:

1. From the Connections panel, click Refresh from Incoming to update the sheets with the results of your gap assessment and the ESRS data points.
2. From the Datapoints to create CY sheet, review the datapoints related to your identified gaps.
3. Contact your Workiva CSM or implementation partner to request the Structured Metric File (SMF).

4. For each datapoint to create a metric for, enter its details from Datapoints to create CY as a separate row in the SMF's Metrics sheet.

   • ESRS Delegated Act
   • Simplified ESRS

   Datapoints to create CY	Metrics
   Topic	Enter in the corresponding Topic column.
   Disclosure description	Enter as the metric's name or description, in the Metric or Metric description column, respectively
   Content type	Select the corresponding Metric value type — Number if Quantitative; Text if Qualitative.
   Framework: ESRS	Copy and paste into the Framework: ESRS column.
   Program Tag: Voluntary	Copy and paste the value — Yes or No — in the Program tag: Voluntary column.

   Datapoints to create CY	Metrics
   Topic	Enter in the corresponding Topic column.
   Disclosure description	Enter as the metric's name or description, in the Metric or Metric description column, respectively
   Framework: ESRS	Copy and paste into the Framework: ESRS column.

5. After you complete the Metrics sheet, contact your Workiva CSM or implementation partner to add the metrics to your Program.

To learn more about the SMF, view Create Sustainability Program from Structured Metric File.

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