This article is for:
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Sustainability Reporting Workspaces with the Sustainability Path toolkit enabled
If interested in Sustainability Path, contact your Customer Support Manager (CSM), or request a demo.
Ideal for those new to Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) or sustainability reporting, the Sustainability Path toolkit helps kickstart your efforts with templates and files needed to disclose topics recommended for any company and specific to your industries:
- Sustainability project work plan spreadsheet, to establish your project timeline and identify your collaborators and goals for sustainability reporting
- Peer & customer analysis spreadsheet, to compile competitive research of your peers' sustainability reporting
- Governance, strategy & risk management spreadsheet, to document how your company supports sustainability performance with its business processes and policies
- Topic selector spreadsheet, to identify material topics based on your company's industries
- Sustainability Program, set up with material topics and metrics
- Factbook spreadsheet, the source of truth for your reporting outputs
- Sample reports and presentations, for inspiration of how to disclose your sustainability performance
Note: When enabled in your workspace, your Workiva Solution Architect or implementation partner may customize these templates and files as needed for your reporting needs.
Use these files to help guide your conversations and decisions to create meaningful reporting.
Step 1. Plan ahead
Sustainability reporting is a team sport! Before you dive in, figure out your players — the workspace members to collaborate on a report — and their goals with the Sustainability project work plan spreadsheet:
- The Checklist sheet breaks down the steps required to develop a sustainability report. Assign each step to workspace members, and add any custom steps to meet the needs of your company. As members complete steps, update the Status column to track your overall progress.
- On the Project timeline sheet, establish the timeline for the reporting project, culminating with the target date to issue the report. Ensure adequate time to collect data and review draft reports.
- On the Working group sheet, list the workspace members to assist with the report, including their title and the topic they're responsible for.
- On the Goals & vision sheet, list the objectives and aspirations of the project, to help determine the effectiveness and success of your reporting.
- On the Other stakeholders sheet, list other people who may use your report — including external stakeholders like customers, investors, rating agencies, and financial institutions. For each stakeholder, track their title, company, and relevance to your reporting.
Step 2. Research & strategize
Now that you know your players, devise your game plan by identifying the topics to report on and frameworks to use.
To help identify topics to report on and frameworks to use, research the reports issued by each peer and customer from the Peer & customer analysis spreadsheet:
- List the topics they disclose in their reports, such as those based on Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) standards.
- List the frameworks and standards they use, such as SASB, Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Standards, or Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD).
Tip: You can commonly find framework references in the index or footnotes of a sustainability report.
- Record the score or rating they receive from S&P Global®, Sustainalytics®, and CSRHub®, and note any observations or trends about how the ratings their sustainability reporting receives.
- Note any reports you find aspirational from a content or design perspective.
Tip: Keep in mind the purpose and audience of your reporting as you research others' reports. As sustainability reporting continues to evolve, it's important to new reporting developments, as not every peer or customer may follow best practices or the latest trends.
From the Governance, strategy & risk management spreadsheet, evaluate and document your company's corporate governance, sustainability strategy, and risk management processes, and how they support your strategic objectives for sustainability performance:
- To evaluate the level of accountability throughout the corporate governance process related to information and performance, document the various roles and responsibilities from the Governance structure sheet.
- From the Sustainability strategy documentation sheet, document your company's overall strategy to create long-term value through the consideration of performance. Assess how sustainability-related risks and opportunities are considered in your overall decision-making, strategy, and financial planning processes.
- From the Risk management documentation sheet, evaluate how your company assesses sustainability considerations as part of your enterprise risk management process.
Tip: To align with TCFD, complete the TCFD questionnaire to identify your company's specific climate-related risks and opportunities.
With Sustainability Path, your Sustainability Program comes set up with topics and metrics material to your company's industries. To determine the topics and metrics to disclose in your sustainability reporting, use the Topic selector spreadsheet to identify the topics to set up for data collection:
- From the Frameworks sheet, select Y in the Disclose column for the frameworks to report with — SASB or TCFD.
- From the SASB industry selector sheet, select Y in the Disclose column for your primary and secondary industries. To help determine your industry, use SASB's Find Your Industry tool.
Note: Industry-specific topics are sourced from SASB and TCFD, while the Universal topics contain standards from multiple sources including SASB, GRI, and GHG Protocol.
- When ready to create a Sustainability Program with the material topics, contact your Workiva Customer Success Manager (CSM) or implementation partner.
Step 3. Collect data
To ease and track data collection, your Sustainability Program comes with topics and metrics based on:
- Industry-specific standards from Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB)
- Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Universal Standards, applicable to any industry
- Recommendations from Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD)
To update your Program based on your company's industry, contact your Workiva Customer Success Manager (CSM). You can then adjust your Program metrics as necessary:
- In Metric details, provide context about the metric:
- In Description, enter an explanation of the information the metric discloses.
- In Related Explorer content, the metric's corresponding content it aligns with appears. Connect the metric with additional Sustainability Explorer content as necessary.
- In Program tags, select any additional metadata your company tracks about the metric.
- In Reference attachments, upload any files about the metric, such as guidance downloaded from a framework, or relevant artifacts from stakeholder interviews.
- If you choose to disclose a topic, create and send tasks to assign workspace members to prepare and approve its values.
To ease data collection, the assignee and approver will complete their tasks from the streamlined Workiva Tasks. You can track data collection status from a metric, its topic, or the Program.
Tip: The assignee or approver can provide notes or supporting attachments about the metric as they complete their tasks in Workiva Tasks
Step 4. Report!
As you draft your sustainability report:
- The Factbook spreadsheet curates the values collected in Program metrics. Use this section as your source of truth as you create and design reports to disclose your performance.
- To help save time, Sustainability Path provides a pre-populated Avikro sample sustainability report document, which starts with pre-linked disclosures and can serve as your initial audit trail. Edit this document's content to fit your company's unique sustainability story.
Tip: Sustainability Path also provides a pre-populated sample Sustainability board update presentation, which you can use as an inspiration or starting point for additional reporting outputs.
To ensure accurate disclosures from the Factbook spreadsheet:
- Use source links to provide values for the destination documents, presentations, and spreadsheets of your reporting outputs.
- From the Connections panel, refresh all incoming and outgoing connections to update the current values.
- To update linked destinations with the new values, click Publish.