The International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) Sustainability Disclosure Standards — issued by the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) — helps companies disclose consistent, comparable, and verifiable information about the impact of sustainability-related risks and opportunities.
To help align your reporting with the quantitative and qualitative requirements of the IFRS SDS, you can supplement your Sustainability Reporting workspace with additional templates and files:
- Templates to help document and collect stakeholder perspectives on the financial impact — or materiality — of Standards' topics on your company from Assessments and Reports
- The ISSB gap assessment spreadsheet, to record the results of the materiality assessment and identify gaps
- The Gap assessment results and visualization spreadsheet, to help track the gaps identified at-a-glance
- The ISSB datapoint accelerator spreadsheet, to identify Standards' datapoints related to the gaps identified and help ease the creation of metrics in Sustainability Program to resolve those gaps
- A sample ISSB report document, as an example to pull inspiration from
- An IFRS - ISSB section within your Factbook spreadsheet
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.
Step 1. Enable IFRS Sustainability Disclosure Standards in Explorer
The IFRS Sustainability Disclosure Standards include:
- S1: General Requirements for Disclosure of Sustainability-related Financial Information
- S2: Climate-related Disclosures
To browse and search the content of these Standards, select IFRS from the Properties panel in Sustainability Explorer.
For more information, view Use International Financial Reporting Standards Sustainability Disclosure Standards in Sustainability Explorer.
Step 2. Assess topic materiality
To determine which Standards to disclose, you can use Assessments to collect stakeholders' perspectives and identify topics' financial materiality based on their risks and opportunities to your company and its bottom line.
Tip: If your workspace also includes the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) add-on, you can use its double-materiality assessments and reports to determine the materiality of IFRS SDS topics.
To enable this materiality assessment, provide the risks and opportunities (ROs) to assess, such as:
- Risks to your company's cash flow, or of employee turnover
- Opportunities to improve employee morale and combat corruption
In addition, provide:
- The workspace members to receive assessments
- Which of your company's entities to include in assessments
- The affected stakeholder groups — such as investors, auditors, and local authorities
- The areas of your company's value chain to assess
Workiva uses this information to implement these templates in Assessments.
| Template | Assesses |
|---|---|
| 1a. Topic collection | The scope of the topics that require ROs or may be relevant to your business — such as based on desktop research, sustainability policies, objectives, or legislation — through workshops with stakeholder and their direct feedback |
| 1b. RO collection | The risks and opportunities relevant to your company, its value chain, and affected stakeholders |
| 2. Financial materiality assessment | The financial materiality of ROs, in terms of how they affect capital and resources |
| 3. RO materiality decision | The final materiality decision of ROs, based on their assessed financial materiality |
| 4. Topic materiality decision | The final materiality decision of topics, based on their assessed financial materiality |
Tip: When Workiva implements these templates, your company identifies which key stakeholders to consult for each topic's assessments.
After implementation:
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From Reports , select the key stakeholders to receive each assessment:
Assessment Stakeholder assignment report 1a. Topic collection 1. Topic collection assessment stakeholder assignment in the 1. Step A: Understanding the context folder 1b. RO collection 1. RO collection assessment stakeholder assignment in the 2. Step B: Identification of ROs folder 2. Financial materiality assessment 1. Assessments stakeholder assignment in the 3a. Materiality assessments folder 3. RO materiality decision 1. Topic & RO decision assessment stakeholder assignment in the 3b. Materiality decision assessments folder 4. Topic materiality decision 1. Topic & RO decision assessment stakeholder assignment in the 3b. Materiality decision assessments folder - From Assessments, use these templates to create and send assessments to collect stakeholders' perceptions on each topic's materiality. You can then gauge the materiality of topics based on the results of these assessments from Reports.
To learn more, view Assess materiality of IFRS Sustainability Disclosure Standards.
Step 3. Assess and resolve gaps in data collection
The supplemental templates include the ISSB gap assessment spreadsheet.
From this spreadsheet, you can choose which of the Standards' disclosures apply to each RO — such as based on the materiality assessments — and identify gaps in your data collection toward the disclosure requirements.
Tip: From the Gap assessment results and visualization spreadsheet, you can analyze the progress and results of your gap assessments, both in-depth and at a high-level.
To help reconcile any gaps identified, you can use the ISSB datapoint accelerator spreadsheet to align disclosure requirements with new or existing metrics in Sustainability Program.
From these metrics, you can:
- Align values with corresponding content in Sustainability Explorer for the IFRS Sustainability Disclosure Standards or Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) Standards.
- Upload PDFs of the full Standard as reference attachments to ease access to any formulas or tables required for reporting.
- Create tasks to assign workspace members to collect required values through metrics, Workiva Tasks, or connected source files.
Tip: To help comply with industry-specific reporting needs, the IFRS Sustainability Disclosure Standards require the application of SASB Standards. To update the ISSB gap assessment spreadsheet with metric values that align with IFRS Sustainability Disclosure Standards or SASB, click Refresh for the incoming connections from the Connections panel.
To learn more, view:
- Assess gaps for IFRS Sustainability Disclosure Standards
- Import metrics for gaps in IFRS Sustainability Disclosure Standards
Step 4. Create ISSB report
To disclose the values collected for your material topics, you can create a highly-designed ISSB report as a Document or Presentation. From your Factbook spreadsheet, you can use the IFRS - ISSB section within the Framework indices to review your gap assessment and prepare disclosures to report.
- From the Step 1: ISSB scoping sheet, review the disclosures that apply to each RO, based on your gap assessment.
- From the Step 2: ISSB analysis sheet, review the Sustainability Program metrics and ROs that align with each disclosure, based on your gap assessment.
- From the Step 3. ISSB index sheet, use details about metric values to help prepare disclosures in reporting outputs:
- In Response, use the values from each metric for your ISSB report, such as to prepare in the Performance tables section.
- In Reference, enter how you refer to the disclosure requirement in your ISSB report, such as
IFRS S2-13-(b). - In Note, enter any additional information about the value or disclosure requirement, such as for a footnote or general context.
- From the Analysis: Metrics and framework index sheet, review any additional frameworks or standards from Sustainability Explorer that align with each metric.
To learn more, view Use Factbook as source for sustainability reporting.