SASB Standards for Industry ESG Disclosure Training Course

Course overview

Sustainability teams are increasingly asked to produce industry-specific ESG disclosures that investors can compare, assurance teams can test, and business units can support with evidence. Generic sustainability narratives do not meet this need. The SASB Standards provide a sector-based structure for identifying financially material sustainability topics and selecting decision-useful metrics, but applying them requires more than locating a list of indicators. Practitioners must determine the right industry classification, interpret technical protocols, define reporting boundaries, trace data to operational owners, and document judgements that can withstand review.

This five-day course teaches participants to apply the SASB Standards as a practical disclosure method. Participants work through SASB industry classification, the Materiality Map, topic and metric selection, metric protocols, activity metrics, data definitions, evidence requirements, and disclosure drafting. They learn how SASB-based reporting relates to IFRS S1 and how to use SASB metrics within annual reports, sustainability reports, investor materials, and internal ESG reporting packs. Sessions address common issues including incomplete operational data, multi-site boundaries, estimates, restatements, narrative claims, and controls over reported metrics.

Training combines instructor-led explanation with worked disclosure examples, industry cases, data-mapping workshops, peer review, and facilitated drafting. Each participant develops a SASB Disclosure Implementation Pack for a selected organisation or business unit, including its industry rationale, material topic assessment, priority metric register, data-owner map, evidence checklist, and draft disclosure extracts. This gives participants a credible starting point for an internal reporting project rather than a set of abstract notes.

The course suits sustainability, EHS, finance, investor relations, risk, and reporting professionals who need to build or improve an industry-based ESG disclosure process. It is particularly valuable where an organisation is aligning voluntary reporting with investor expectations or preparing governance and data foundations for IFRS S1-aligned disclosures.

Course objectives

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

• Classify an organisation using the SASB Sustainable Industry Classification System and document the industry-selection rationale
• Identify financially material sustainability topics using the SASB Materiality Map and company-specific evidence
• Select applicable SASB disclosure topics, accounting metrics, and activity metrics for a defined reporting entity
• Interpret SASB metric protocols to create auditable data definitions, calculation rules, and reporting boundaries
• Build a metric-to-data-owner register linking each SASB metric to source systems, control owners, and evidence
• Assess data quality through completeness, accuracy, consistency, traceability, and estimate-review checks
• Draft SASB-aligned quantitative tables and narrative disclosures with clear assumptions, limitations, and cross-references
• Produce a phased SASB Disclosure Implementation Pack with governance actions, milestones, and assurance-readiness priorities

Benefits of attending

Target competencies

Who should attend

• Sustainability Reporting Managers — who must translate ESG commitments into investor-useful, industry-specific disclosures
• EHS Managers — who own environmental, health and safety data required for SASB accounting metrics
• Corporate Reporting and Finance Managers — who need controlled non-financial information for annual-report and IFRS S1-related reporting
• Investor Relations Managers — who respond to analyst questions on financially material sustainability performance
• ESG Data and Assurance Leads — who design data trails, evidence files, and review controls for reported metrics
• Risk and Compliance Managers — who need to assess disclosure exposure arising from unsupported ESG claims or inconsistent data

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should be comfortable reading corporate reports, sustainability reports, or operational performance data and should understand basic ESG terms such as materiality, reporting boundary, KPI, and greenhouse-gas emissions. Experience with Excel or a similar spreadsheet tool is useful because exercises involve metric registers, data-owner maps, and evidence checks. No previous use of the SASB Standards, assurance qualification, accounting designation, or specialist ESG reporting software is required. This is a foundation-to-intermediate course: complete beginners should expect a structured introduction before progressing to detailed metric interpretation and disclosure design.

Training methodology

The course uses short instructor-led briefings to establish each SASB method, followed by guided application to realistic company scenarios from high-impact sectors. Participants classify an organisation, interrogate Materiality Map results, interpret metric protocols, and build registers in structured spreadsheet templates. Small groups challenge each other’s topic choices, boundaries, assumptions, and evidence trails as an internal review team would. Daily case work accumulates into an individual SASB Disclosure Implementation Pack, and the final session includes peer feedback and a practical 90-day application plan.

Course outline

Day 1: SASB Standards and industry materiality

• Purpose and architecture of the SASB Standards
• Sustainable Industry Classification System industry selection
• SASB Materiality Map interpretation
• Financial materiality and enterprise-value relevance
• Disclosure topics, accounting metrics, and activity metrics
• Relationship between SASB Standards and IFRS S1
• Industry-specific ESG disclosure benchmarking

Workshop: Participants classify a case organisation, compare plausible industry classifications, and produce a documented industry-selection rationale.

Day 2: Selecting topics and defining disclosure scope

• Reading SASB disclosure topic descriptions
• Screening applicability of accounting metrics
• Entity, operational-control, and value-chain boundaries
• Materiality evidence from risks, revenues, regulations, and stakeholders
• Company-specific topic prioritisation matrix
• Activity metric selection and denominator design
• Documenting exclusions and non-applicability decisions

Workshop: Participants create a SASB applicability assessment that identifies priority topics, applicable metrics, activity metrics, and justified exclusions.

Day 3: Metric protocols, data and evidence

• Interpreting SASB technical protocols and definitions
• Unit conventions, calculation rules, and reporting periods
• Source-system mapping for EHS and operational data
• Data-owner and control-owner assignment
• Evidence files, audit trails, and retention requirements
• Data-quality testing for completeness and accuracy
• Estimates, restatements, and methodological changes

Workshop: Participants build a metric register and evidence map for selected SASB metrics, identifying data sources, owners, controls, and gaps.

Day 4: Drafting credible SASB disclosures

• Quantitative metric table design
• Narrative disclosure supported by SASB metrics
• Assumptions, limitations, and methodological notes
• Year-on-year comparability and trend explanation
• Cross-referencing annual reports and sustainability reports
• Avoiding greenwashing and unsupported performance claims
• Internal review and disclosure sign-off workflow

Workshop: Participants draft a SASB disclosure table and supporting narrative, then conduct a peer review against protocol, evidence, and clarity criteria.

Day 5: Implementation, governance and assurance readiness

• SASB reporting operating model design
• Roles for sustainability, EHS, finance, legal, and investor relations
• Control matrices for ESG disclosure metrics
• Assurance-readiness evidence requirements
• Integrating SASB outputs with IFRS S1 reporting processes
• Reporting-cycle milestones and dependency planning
• Board and executive reporting on disclosure readiness

Workshop: Participants complete and present a SASB Disclosure Implementation Pack with a 90-day action plan, governance model, and priority data improvements.

Tools & standards covered

SASB Standards, SASB Materiality Map, SASB Standards Navigator, IFRS S1 General Requirements for Disclosure of Sustainability-related Financial Information

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