Scaling In-House Design! Seeking Sustainability Reporting Tips
Hi Community! 👋 Posting today on behalf of my customer, who is focused on an exciting goal: expanding their in-house design and formatting capabilities within Workiva for their upcoming Sustainability Report.
They want to get the most out of Workiva’s Designed Reporting features and are looking for real-world inspiration and best practices from anyone who has navigated this workflow.
We’d love to hear your top strategies:
- 📂 Showcase Your Work: Drop a link below to public sustainability reports designed inside Workiva so we can see what's possible!
- 💡 Share Your Wisdom: What is your #1 best practice or "must-know" tip for building an efficient, beautiful reporting process?
Leave a comment below with your insights or links! If you're open to a quick message exchange or a brief coffee chat with them to talk shop, let us know. Let’s collaborate! 👇
🔔 Want to learn along with us? Even if you don't have a tip to share just yet, be sure to Like or Follow this post so you can stay updated and see all the examples and advice shared by fellow customer
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We (The Cigna Group) are designing our report in Workiva this year (first time). It's going really well, and will be published at the end of June! So, more to come.
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So glad to hear that Jill Magruder, keep us updated!
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Gap Inc. builds our report in Workiva - here's last year's as an example: https://gapinc-prod-a6bndyfubmc5d9ey.z03.azurefd.net/gapmedia/gapcorporatesite/media/images/impact/2024-gap-inc-impact-report-1.pdf
There are limitations, certain infographics are built in InDesign and then copied in as an Image, and the fixed vs. floating table limitations on footnotes are frustrating, but we've found workarounds and overall saved a lot on agency design costs and time.
Using the Style Guides, importing your brand fonts and colors, and updating the page format for header/footers is key.
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We use the Workiva Sustainability Management solution to create and draft the Workiva 2025 Sustainability Report, track progress against our sustainability targets, and manage carbon data. (Read our most recent report: Workiva 2025 Sustainability Report.)
As a non-designer, I personally find the experience generally intuitive and easy to navigate. The Help Center articles and Learning Hub resources are a great way to figure out what's possible. Incorporating a company's brand guidelines, style guide, and colors is a must! I'm a huge fan of creating linked tables and chart visuals with data linked directly to the sustainability program. A simple and easy audit trail!
Before joining Workiva's Global Sustainability team, I also used Workiva for sustainability reporting at a prior company. I've been through sustainability reporting processes where every element from data collection to design and publication is completed solely in the Workiva platform. I've also been through reporting cycles where we integrated Workiva with Adobe InDesign for more complex design elements. Regardless the route you choose, the best way to learn is to dive in and start experimenting. I've found that almost everything is possible; the path to achieve what you are trying to accomplish may deviate from the usual 'way' of doing something.
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As someone who recently worked on the design of a sustainability report in Workiva, one of my biggest takeaways was the importance of investing in design time upfront. Taking the time to build out your page layouts, reusable design elements, and styles early on makes adding content and managing the report much easier. The more thought you put into the setup, the easier it is to make changes, maintain consistency, and manage the report as it grows.
I was surprised by how much flexibility Workiva provides once that structure is in place. After the core layouts and styles are established, there is plenty of room to customize the design and break from the standard layout to create unique page designs when needed. There is definitely a learning curve, but as a designer coming from an InDesign background, I found Workiva to be far less limiting than I initially expected.
I found some of Workiva's training courses to be a helpful starting point before beginning a project. Workiva's online training articles and videos are also great resources when questions come up. Taking a few minutes to search the support resources can often save a lot of time and lead you to an answer much faster than trying to figure it out on your own.0Iniciar sesión para dejar un comentario.
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