ESRS Reporting and Double Materiality Assessment Training Course

Course overview

Organisations subject to the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) must produce ESRS disclosures that are traceable to evidence, connected to financial reporting, and based on a defensible double materiality assessment. Sustainability teams often face fragmented data ownership, inconsistent impact and risk terminology, stakeholder-engagement gaps, and uncertainty over which ESRS datapoints apply. This course addresses the practical challenge of turning ESRS requirements into a controlled reporting process that can withstand assurance scrutiny and management challenge.

Participants work through the ESRS architecture, the relationship between CSRD, the European Sustainability Reporting Standards and the EU Taxonomy, and the two dimensions of materiality: impact materiality and financial materiality. They learn to define the assessment perimeter, map upstream and downstream value-chain impacts, identify actual and potential impacts, assess sustainability-related risks and opportunities, design stakeholder engagement, score and prioritise matters, and document materiality conclusions. The course also covers ESRS 1, ESRS 2, topical standards, disclosure requirement mapping, evidence registers, governance responsibilities and assurance-ready audit trails.

Delivery combines instructor-led interpretation of requirements with worked reporting examples, group scoring exercises and structured workshops using EFRAG implementation guidance and Microsoft Excel templates. Participants complete a double materiality assessment pack for a realistic organisation, including a stakeholder map, impact-risk-opportunity register, scoring matrix, materiality matrix, ESRS disclosure index and action plan. This is designed for professionals who need to lead, review or challenge ESRS reporting work rather than simply understand the regulations.

Course objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Interpret ESRS 1, ESRS 2 and topical standard requirements to determine applicable disclosure obligations
• Define a double materiality assessment perimeter covering operations, subsidiaries and the upstream and downstream value chain
• Map actual and potential impacts, sustainability-related risks and opportunities in an impact-risk-opportunity register
• Design a stakeholder engagement plan with stakeholder categories, evidence sources and consultation questions
• Apply impact materiality and financial materiality scoring criteria using documented thresholds and decision rules
• Produce a defensible materiality matrix and material matters decision log for management approval
• Build an ESRS disclosure index linking material topics, datapoints, data owners, evidence and reporting locations
• Prepare an assurance-ready assessment file containing methodology, assumptions, controls and evidence references

Benefits of attending

Target competencies

Who should attend

• Sustainability and ESG Managers — who must establish or lead CSRD and ESRS reporting processes
• Corporate Reporting Managers — who need to integrate sustainability disclosures with annual-report governance and controls
• Environment, Health and Safety Managers — who own environmental, workforce and safety evidence for ESRS disclosures
• Risk and Internal Audit Managers — who must challenge materiality conclusions and assess reporting-control design
• Finance Managers and Controllers — who evaluate financially material sustainability risks, opportunities and related disclosures
• Consultants and Assurance Professionals — who support clients with ESRS readiness, materiality assessments or limited assurance

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should have working familiarity with corporate sustainability reporting, ESG topics or management-system data, and be comfortable reading policy documents, risk registers and annual reports. Prior exposure to CSRD, GRI, SASB, TCFD, EU Taxonomy or materiality assessments is helpful but not essential. Participants should understand basic organisational structures and value-chain concepts, and should be able to use Microsoft Excel for tables and simple scoring calculations. No legal qualification, accounting designation, lifecycle assessment expertise, specialist ESG reporting software or prior ESRS implementation experience is required.

Training methodology

The course uses short instructor-led ESRS briefings followed by applied work on a continuing corporate case. Participants interpret disclosure requirements, map a value chain, identify impacts, risks and opportunities, and test scoring decisions against stakeholder evidence and financial pathways. Small groups compare materiality thresholds and defend conclusions in a simulated management review. Microsoft Excel templates are used to build registers, matrices and disclosure indexes. The final session converts each participant’s case outputs into a workplace implementation plan with owners, milestones and evidence requirements.

Course outline

Day 1: ESRS and CSRD reporting architecture

• CSRD scope, reporting timetable and reporting-boundary considerations
• ESRS Set 1 structure and the role of cross-cutting standards
• ESRS 1 general requirements and materiality principles
• ESRS 2 general disclosures, governance and strategy requirements
• Relationship between ESRS, EU Taxonomy and financial reporting
• Topical standards E1 to E5, S1 to S4 and G1 overview
• Disclosure requirement, application requirement and datapoint navigation

Workshop: Participants analyse a sample company profile and produce an initial ESRS applicability map identifying likely disclosure areas and internal owners.

Day 2: Double materiality assessment design

• Impact materiality versus financial materiality under ESRS 1
• Assessment perimeter across entities, operations and value-chain stages
• Upstream and downstream value-chain mapping techniques
• Impact-risk-opportunity register structure and classification rules
• Actual, potential, positive and negative impact identification
• Stakeholder categories, affected stakeholders and rights-holder identification
• Materiality governance, decision rights and methodology documentation

Workshop: Participants build a value-chain map and an initial impact-risk-opportunity register for the course case organisation.

Day 3: Evidence, engagement and materiality scoring

• Evidence sources for impacts, risks and opportunities
• Stakeholder engagement methods, sampling and consultation records
• Severity scoring through scale, scope and irremediable character
• Likelihood scoring for potential impacts and financial effects
• Financial materiality pathways including cash flows, access to finance and cost of capital
• Scoring thresholds, aggregation rules and sensitivity testing
• Bias controls, challenge processes and management validation

Workshop: Participants score selected impacts, risks and opportunities in Excel and produce a documented rationale for each materiality conclusion.

Day 4: From material matters to ESRS disclosures

• Converting material matters into applicable ESRS disclosure requirements
• Disclosure index design and mandatory versus conditional datapoints
• Policies, actions, targets and metrics under ESRS topical standards
• Data-owner mapping and data-collection control points
• Qualitative narrative evidence and quantitative metric validation
• Entity-specific disclosures and omission assessments
• Connecting sustainability risks and opportunities to financial planning

Workshop: Participants create an ESRS disclosure index linking material matters to datapoints, evidence sources, owners and reporting locations.

Day 5: Assurance readiness and implementation planning

• Limited assurance expectations and audit-trail design
• Materiality assessment files, evidence registers and version control
• Management review packs and board-level materiality reporting
• Controls for data quality, estimates and methodological changes
• Common ESRS reporting failures and corrective actions
• Annual reporting-cycle planning and cross-functional workstreams
• Implementation roadmap, milestones and accountability assignment

Workshop: Participants assemble a double materiality assessment pack and present a 12-month ESRS implementation roadmap for management challenge.

Tools & standards covered

ESRS Set 1, EFRAG IG 1: Materiality Assessment Implementation Guidance, EFRAG IG 2: Value Chain Implementation Guidance, Microsoft Excel

A typical training day

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in the East Africa Time zone, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

How you can take this course

Certification

Participants who complete the full five days receive the Skillset Development Certificate of Completion, stating the course title, course code, dates and delivery format — suitable for professional-development records and employer reimbursement.

Frequently asked questions