5 Important Lessons for Starting CSRD in 2024

Have you just started your CSRD journey this year and want to hear what others have learned in the process? Don’t want to make a mistake given the importance and effort needed to prepare for CSRD? We’re here to help with 5 key lessons we have learned from our experience with guiding clients in their preparation for CSRD.

Before we get onto the lessons learned, this is a good moment to review your CSRD knowledge. We’ve created a simple white paper on everything CSRD. Check it out before reading on about how these lessons can help improve your CSRD journey.

In this blogpost I will be walking you through five of the key lessons we learned from starting CSRD and how you can incorporate these lessons into your CSRD journey. We explain three additional lessons in our webinar on “everything you need to know about CSRD” which you can watch here.

We have also spent the last months building a step-by-step program to guide companies like yours through the preparation steps for CSRD. Hear all about our Tools and Platform in this video. Here you can learn all about how our online program with many additional consulting options might be the perfect tool for you!

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1. Speak the Same Language

CSRD is a complicated language. From its acronyms to new indicators, it can feel like you’re learning a whole new language. Additionally, it is important to include different parts of your company from the beginning, such IT, tech support, HR, and CSR managers. We learned that to properly work together it is important that you all speak the same language. Therefore, we use simple words and descriptions to get everyone on board for CSRD. CSRD will be a simpler process if everyone can understand each other and knows, for example, what information is asked for. How can you make sure to speak the same language? As part of our CSRD process we make sure to make it as visual as possible, since a picture speaks more than a 1000 words. We boil each concept down to a description that even someone with no sustainability experience will understand.

2. Be a “Smooth Operator”

Just like Sade sings in their song “Smooth Operator”, it’s important that you are careful and observant of how you ask questions and conduct preparation for CSRD. You will be asking your supply chain about difficult and sometimes sensitive topics, such as the use of child labor. Therefore, it’s important to be smooth about how you ask these questions. For example, highlight how we are trying to gather a “baseline assessment” which takes the pressure away from a company already thinking it needs to be “perfect”. It is thus also important to approach your supply chain and prepare them before these questions come, which is another reason to start in time and make it easier in the future when you will be requiring data from these different parties.

3. Start Simple

When talking about CSRD it is impossible to ignore the ESRS. These European Sustainability Reporting Standards exist of more than sustainability 200 topics that have to be reported on. When looking at ESRS, you may be overwhelmed by thinking of how many new things you will have to implement. Thus, we suggest starting simple and start with what you already have. This means showing your company what KPIs you currently have (and measure) and how many of them may already overlap with the ESRS topics. Thus, the results the ESRS and your double materiality analysis (follow link to download our whitepaper) are just building upon what you already have. In our 8 step CSRD process we start by mapping your current KPIs to show what you already have and decide how to will build further on this with the Materiality Analysis results and ESRS.

4. Automate, Automate, Automate

CSRD is going to be a yearly report, and a lot of its data will be checked regularly, for example to use to steer your company. Therefore, it’s most time and cost efficient to automate your data collection processes as much as possible. Automating saves time in having to contact each responsible person throughout the year. An automated system doesn’t need to depend on availability of colleagues and updates smoothly, 24 hours a day, year in and out.

5. Make it your own!

Lastly, CSRD is meant to guide you in a direction that better balances people, planet, and profit. However, you don’t need to lose the ethos of your company in this process. Think about what makes sense on a social and ecological level for you and your company. By really making these changes your own, the transition will likely be easier as more employees are on board and see how this aligns with the company’s mission. Also remember to make this process your own, from your impact dashboard, to newly integrated KPIs. Use this new information not just for government purposes but also as a useful insight and steering tool for your company!