Building & Sharing the Data Requirement Template

Building & Sharing the Data Requirement Template

If there is one document that defines the success or failure of your ESG reporting engagement, it is the data requirement template. This is the Excel workbook you share with the client that tells them exactly what data you need, in what format, for what time period. Get this right, and data collection becomes a structured conversation. Get it wrong, and you will spend months chasing fragments of information across departments.

What Is the Data Requirement Template?

The data requirement template is a structured Excel workbook based on the GRI Standards framework. Most consulting firms already have a version of this ready to go: it is one of those documents that gets refined over dozens of engagements and passed down within the team.

The template organizes data requests by GRI standard series:

• GRI 200 series (Economic): Revenue, economic value distributed, procurement spend, tax, anti-corruption
• GRI 300 series (Environmental): Energy consumption, water withdrawal, emissions (Scope 1, 2, 3), waste generated, biodiversity impacts
• GRI 400 series (Social): Employee headcount, diversity breakdown, training hours, health and safety incidents, community investment, supply chain labor practices

Each row in the template corresponds to a specific GRI disclosure. Each column asks for data across multiple years - typically the last two to three years plus the current reporting year. This multi-year structure is important because ESG reports almost always include trend data, and rating agencies specifically look for year-on-year progress.

Tailoring the Template to the Client

This is where your peer benchmarking and materiality work pays off. Before sharing the template, you should already know:

1. What peers are reporting: which GRI standards they reference, which metrics they disclose
2. What the company has reported before: if they have past sustainability reports, review which indicators they covered
3. What is material: based on the materiality assessment (whether existing or freshly conducted)

Using these three inputs, you narrow down the full GRI catalogue to a subset that makes sense for this specific company. A manufacturing company might need GRI 302 (Energy), 303 (Water), 305 (Emissions), 306 (Waste), 401 (Employment), and 403 (Health & Safety). A financial services firm might skip most of the 300 series but focus heavily on 205 (Anti-corruption), 401, and 405 (Diversity).

The Template as a Communication Tool

Here is something that is easy to overlook: the data requirement template is not just a data collection instrument. It is your primary communication tool with the client during the early phase of the engagement.

When you share the template, you are telling the client three things simultaneously:

1. What you need from them: specific metrics, specific years, specific units
2. What the report will cover: the template previews the scope of the report
3. How much work is ahead: the size of the template gives the client a realistic sense of effort

This is why you cannot just email it and wait. The template needs a guided walkthrough.

How to Share It Effectively

The worst thing you can do is email a 50-tab Excel workbook with a note saying "please fill this out." Here is what actually works:

Step 1: Schedule a walkthrough call. Walk the sustainability team through the template tab by tab. Explain what each field means, what units you expect, and where they might find the data internally.

Step 2: Provide field-level guidance. For each data point, add a guidance column or comment explaining:

• What the field is asking for
• What unit to use (kWh, GJ, tonnes, litres, etc.)
• Where this data typically sits (HR system, utility bills, ERP, manual records)
• Whether it is mandatory or optional for the report

Step 3: Assign department owners. Help the sustainability team map each section of the template to the internal department responsible. HR owns the social data. Operations owns energy and waste. Finance owns economic performance. This mapping prevents the sustainability team from becoming a bottleneck.

Step 4: Set interim deadlines. Do not set a single deadline for the entire template. Break it into phases: economic data by week 2, environmental data by week 4, social data by week 6. This creates momentum and lets you start writing chapters as data arrives.

Common Mistakes When Sharing the Template

Asking for too much at once. If the company is a first-time reporter, even a tailored template can feel overwhelming. Consider phasing the request: start with the data they definitely have (economic, governance) and follow up with the harder stuff (supply chain, training hours).

Not explaining why. Department heads who have never dealt with ESG reporting will push back on data requests that feel arbitrary. For every data point, be ready to explain why it matters: "This is required by GRI 305, and your peers all disclose it. Rating agencies specifically look for this metric."

Assuming they understand the units. Energy data can come in kWh, GJ, MWh, or even litres of diesel. Water can be in kilolitres or cubic meters. Emissions can be in tonnes or kilograms. Specify exactly what you want, or you will spend weeks converting and reconciling.

Not requesting historical data. A single year of data has limited value in an ESG report. You need at least two years, ideally three, to show trends. Make this clear from the start: going back to request historical data later is much harder than asking for it upfront.

What Happens After You Share It

Once the template is shared, the client goes into data collection mode. This is where you enter what many consultants call the "silent period": the client is working internally to gather data, and your inbox goes quiet.

Do not mistake silence for progress. The next few lessons will cover what happens during this phase: working with individual departments, escalating when data does not come, running sanity checks on what does arrive, and maintaining version control as data gets updated multiple times.

The template sets the stage. Everything that follows depends on how well you built it.