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Ideal for those new to Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) or sustainability reporting, ESG Path helps kickstart your efforts with the templates and files needed to disclose topics recommended for any company and specific to your industries:

• ESG 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
• Sustainability Program, set up with topics and metrics material to your company's industries
• Factbook spreadsheet, the source of truth for your reporting outputs
• Sample reports and presentations, for inspiration of how to disclose your sustainability performance

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 ESG 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.

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:

1. 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.
2. If you choose to disclose a topic , set up its Metric assignment:
   
   • In Assignee, select the workspace member to prepare the metric's value.
   • To have other workspace members verify the value that the assignee provides, select them as the Approver and set their due date.
   • In Instructions, enter any additional direction to ease data collection.
3. In Metric value, set up the metric's data collection:
   • Select the type of value to collect and — for a Number or Currency — its unit of measurement.
   • In Metric notes, enter any details about the value.
   • In Supporting attachments, upload any known files that support the value, such as utility bills or existing calculations.

   Tip: The assignee or approver can provide notes or supporting attachments about the metric as they complete their tasks in Workiva Tasks.

After you set up all metrics for a topic, click Send tasks to automatically send notify the metrics' assignees and approvals of their tasks.

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.

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, ESG 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: ESG Path also provides a pre-populated sample ESG 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:

1. Use source links to provide values for the destination documents, presentations, and spreadsheets of your reporting outputs.
2. From the Connections panel, refresh all incoming and outgoing connections to update the current values.
3. To update linked destinations with the new values, click Publish.