Ready to produce your first ESG report in Workiva? Start here.
As ESG disclosure moves into a more regulated environment, it makes sense to look to many of the same controls, processes and tools that have supported regulated financial disclosure. One of those tools is Workiva, a technology platform traditionally used by financial reporting teams that is quickly becoming standard among sustainability reporting teams as well. As a Workiva partner, we’re increasingly helping clients transition to produce their reports — in part or in full — within the Workiva environment. Here are a few lessons we’ve picked up along the way.
Expect a learning curve the first year. Look forward to efficiencies in the second.
Many companies adopt Workiva because they expect it to help them save time. However, we think it’s more useful to think of efficiency as a long-term benefit.
If you are considering Workiva adoption, you will want to factor in time to get set up in the platform and train your project leads. And while there are several ways to manage workflow and changes within the system, we’ve seen a lot of success when clients take the time to organize an informal training session or hold office hours for contributors and reviewers before they access the platform. One easy way to help team members get familiar is to provide a test document in your shared Workspace that allows people to practice working within the file.
Build in time for your team to adjust to the new workflow before report kickoff, rather than when you’re deep in the weeds of draft reviews. By the second year, you will have onboarded your team, learned the tool, and set up your data workflows — and you’ll really notice the time savings.
Lay the groundwork for a polished document.
Taking time early on to set your preferred document styles and formatting will help all contributors understand the organization of your report. CRI has created a style guide that we use as a starting point for all Workiva reports that enables seamless collaboration across our content, design and production teams. We recommend tailoring your permissions and style guides within Workiva to lock styles, ensuring that desired styles are applied consistently throughout a document.
Collaborate with purpose.
Workiva functions much like other cloud-based collaboration tools in that it auto-saves files and allows multiple contributors to see progress at the same time. On the platform, you can create documents, sheets and presentations, with menu options that will be familiar to anyone who has worked in Microsoft Office Suite. There are a few features, however, that work differently than other tools you may have utilized before. Some of these features include the ability to manage permissions for contributors and reviewers; link data to source files for more accurate change management; and create milestones for version control. Get comfortable with these features so that you can clearly communicate to contributors how they will be used.
Allow ample time for wrap-up.
Be sure to allot time at the end of your schedule for your design partner to review all styles and formatting for consistency. If you are working toward Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) compliance aligned with the PDF universal accessibility (UA) standard or Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), remediation must occur in the PDF, not the Workiva file. Therefore, even minor changes to the file mean that ADA work must start over from the beginning. Plan to factor in 1 to 2 weeks after all edits are complete for ADA remediation to take place depending on the length of your report.
Lean on those who have been there.
There’s lots to learn about getting the most out of Workiva, and the platform is constantly adding new features to improve design and usability. Beyond undergoing training, we recommend perusing help articles in the Workiva Support Center and conversations with other users in the Workiva Community.
Teaming up with a partner can also help you move faster to get where you need to be. Agency partners have earned certifications, have access to expanded training, and have tested and refined their approaches through work across many different types of clients.
Whether you are just beginning to learn about streamlining reporting workflows or are ready to build a report in Workiva, CRI is ready to help. Contact us to learn more about this new way of reporting.
