Follow this checklist to learn what action items your organisation will have to take to be in compliance with the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and download this version to take our checklist with you.
★ = potential Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) overlap
☐ Map out your organisation ★
Define your organisational boundaries and consolidation approach.
☐ Establish your reporting timeline
Consider the CSRD thresholds (250 employees and/or €40M Turnover and/or €20M total assets) and establish your first reporting year.
☐ Map out your value chain
Explore interdependencies across your value chain, including upstream (suppliers, investors, commodities) and downstream (customers, products, investments), and establish clear reporting boundaries.
☐ Identify overlaps across your compliance and voluntary frameworks ★
Review complementary and overlapping requirements across frameworks such as the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) and International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS).
☐ Build your CSRD task force
Assign responsibility for delivering on CSRD and allocate supporting resources including budget, time, and recruitment needs, and engage a third party to perform assurance.
☐ Partner with external experts
Support your CSRD task force with dedicated experts that can guide you through key elements of CSRD disclosure and environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) strategy.
☐ Educate and level-set
Understand the application of CSRD with educational sessions for internal stakeholders and peer benchmarking.
☐ Review ESG topics and perform a gap analysis
Identify and collate relevant ESG work done to date and compare with key European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) topics.
☐ Conduct a double materiality assessment ★
Consult relevant stakeholder groups, explore interdependencies within the business model and supply chain, define criteria and thresholds to determine material impacts, risks and opportunities.
☐ Establish material topics and areas of focus
Review your existing ESG provisions and define additional work that’s needed to meet requirements across material CSRD topics. Existing materials may include greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions goals and reduction strategy, ESG materiality assessment, and supplier or customer engagement.
☐ Perform risk and opportunity assessments ★
Explore material risks and opportunities in more depth, including scenario analysis and quantification of potential effects.
☐ Develop mitigation and adaptation strategies
When reviewing material risks, put a plan in place for long-term strategic action.
☐ Develop opportunity plans
Explore how to maximise benefit from material opportunities, including changes to the business model and company strategy.
☐ Set meaningful targets
Establish goals for taking action in material areas.
☐ Data collection and management ★
Collect initial data streams, exploring availability and quality of necessary information. Develop data collection pathways and data management processes for all relevant performance measures.
☐ Engage with your supply chain
Educate your suppliers and empower them to provide key data and information.
☐ Develop policies and action plans
Work internally and with your supply chain to establish internal policies and reduction action plans
☐ Obtain executive sign off
Communicate goals, strategy, policies and action plans internally and secure buy-in from the business.
☐ Build your CSRD disclosure
Collect and collate information to meet the needs of the standards.
☐ Obtain third party assurance ★
Engage an external assurance partner to review and assess your processes and disclosures.
☐ Publish your disclosure ★
Embed your disclosure within your management reporting in both a human- and machine-readable format.
☐ Communicate
Convey key messages both internally and externally.
☐ Implement policies and action plans
Act upon commitments made, implementing short-, medium-, and long-term actions.
☐ Improve and evolve data
Evolve processes over time to improve data coverage and quality.
☐ Monitor progress
Continue to review performance measures to assess the outcomes of your actions and progress towards your goals.
☐ Repeat and reassess
Update your CSRD disclosure annually, with regular reassessment to ensure ongoing relevance.