Before you register for the GRI ESRS exam or invest in training, understand what the certification actually tests, what success requires, and where most candidates go wrong.

As interest in ESRS certification grows, many sustainability and ESG professionals assume that:

“If I understand ESRS, I’ll be fine.”

In practice, this assumption often leads to:

• under-preparation
• exam stress
• costly retakes
• and misplaced confidence

This article explains the what and why.
Practical implementation is a separate step.

The GRI ESRS Certification Briefing was created to close this gap.

Produced by FBRH Consultants, a GRI Certified Training Partner, this briefing distils what professionals most need to understand before they commit to the certification process.

What You’ll Gain from This Briefing This PDF briefing helps you understand:

• What the GRI ESRS certification actually signals professionally
• How the certification pathway works at a high level
• What the exam is designed to test (and what it is not)
• Why preparation method matters more than time spent
• What successful candidates consistently do differently

This is not exam coaching and not promotional material.
It is a clarity document designed to help you make informed decisions.

Who This Briefing Is For

This briefing is relevant if you are:

• Responsible for ESRS or CSRD reporting
• Advising organisations on sustainability or ESG
• Preparing for assurance, audit, or compliance roles
• Considering ESRS certification as a career signal

Download the GRI ESRS Certification Briefing (PDF)

The post GRI ESRS Certification Briefing: What the certification involves – how to prepare effectively appeared first on SustainCase - Sustainability Magazine.

As organisations across Europe prepare for ESRS reporting under the CSRD, many assume the challenge is technical: understanding standards, datapoints, and disclosure requirements.

A practical PDF guide outlining the most common ESRS reporting mistakes under CSRD — and how organisations can avoid them.

In practice, the biggest ESRS failures rarely come from missing knowledge.
They come from how organisations approach ESRS in the first place.

Based on our work with sustainability, ESG, and compliance teams, we consistently see the same structural mistakes — mistakes that quietly increase workload, create assurance risk, and lead to costly rework later on.

Below are some of the most common ESRS pitfalls organisations fall into — often with the best intentions.

1. Treating ESRS as “just another report”

A common starting point is to treat ESRS like a traditional sustainability report: gather information, draft disclosures, and aim to produce a document.

The problem?
ESRS is not a document exercise — it is a system.

Without a repeatable process that links governance, data, controls, and documentation, disclosures quickly become inconsistent and difficult to defend under assurance.

Many organisations only realise this when auditors start asking how decisions were made — not just what was reported.

2. Starting with the standards instead of double materiality

ESRS standards are detailed and extensive. It’s tempting to start by working through datapoints and requirements one by one.

This almost always leads to:

• overreporting
• wasted effort
• unclear sustainability messages

A defensible ESRS report does not start with the standards.
It starts with double materiality, properly planned and documented.

When materiality is weak, everything downstream becomes harder.

This article explains the what and why.
Practical implementation is a separate step.

3. Weak or informal stakeholder engagement

Stakeholder engagement is sometimes treated as a box-ticking exercise — a survey here, a workshop there.

Under ESRS, this is risky.

If engagement lacks structure, purpose, and documentation, materiality decisions become difficult to defend. Assurance teams look closely at how stakeholder input influenced outcomes — not whether engagement happened at all.

4. Overreporting to “be safe”

One of the most damaging ESRS instincts is the idea that “more disclosure is safer disclosure”.

In reality, overreporting:

• obscures what is truly material
• increases audit burden
• weakens clarity for users of the report

ESRS rewards focus, not volume. Achieving that focus requires planning — not last-minute filtering.

Feeling overwhelmed? That’s normal.

Most professionals reading this are not trying to become sustainability experts.
They simply want to:

• avoid mistakes
• meet expectations
• build something they won’t have to redo next year

That’s exactly how SustainCase is designed.

If any of these sound like you, start here:

 I’m new and don’t know where to begin
 I need to report, but only proportionately
 I’m under time pressure
 I want to do this once and do it properly

How to Begin Sustainability Reporting — Safely

A short, practical orientation used by professionals before they commit time or budget.

5. Making key judgments without an audit trail

Every ESRS report involves judgment calls:

• scope decisions
• prioritisation
• assumptions

When these judgments are not clearly documented, organisations expose themselves to assurance findings and credibility issues — even if the final disclosures look reasonable on the surface.

6. Leaving data and systems to the end

Many teams draft ESRS disclosures first and only later realise that:

• data owners are unclear
• systems don’t support requirements
• controls are missing

This creates stress, rework, and compliance risk — often late in the reporting cycle.

The common thread behind all these mistakes

Across all of these issues, one pattern stands out:

Lack of structured planning.

Without planning, ESRS becomes reactive.
With planning, ESRS becomes manageable, defensible, and strategically useful.

Planning is what connects:

• materiality
• stakeholder engagement
• data collection
• documentation
• assurance readiness
• digital reporting

And yet, it’s the part most organisations underestimate.

Want the full list of ESRS mistakes — and how to avoid them?

We’ve put together a concise, practical guide that outlines:

• the top ESRS mistakes organisations make
• why they happen
• what to do differently to avoid rework, confusion, and assurance risk

A practical PDF guide outlining the most common ESRS reporting mistakes under CSRD — and how organisations can avoid them.

The guide is designed for sustainability, ESG, compliance, audit, and reporting professionals who want a clear, structured approach to ESRS — without guesswork.

Download the free PDF: Top ESRS Mistakes to Avoid

Why we created this guide

ESRS does not fail because organisations don’t care.
It fails when complexity isn’t matched with structure.

The goal of this guide is not to overwhelm — but to help teams recognise early warning signs and approach ESRS more confidently and responsibly.

The post ESRS Reporting: Why Most Organisations Get It Wrong (Without Realising It) appeared first on SustainCase - Sustainability Magazine.

Patrick de Cambourg, Chair of the EFRAG Sustainability Reporting Board (SRB), stated:

“This simplification reflects a crucial balance: supporting Europe’s competitiveness and reducing unnecessary burden, while preserving the EU’s leadership in sustainable finance and its commitment to the Green Deal. The Simplified ESRS provide a clearer, more proportionate framework that strengthens trust, transparency and our collective ability to address long-term sustainability challenges.”

References:

https://www.esgtoday.com/efrag-releases-simplified-european-sustainability-reporting-standards/

The post EFRAG Unveils Simplified European Sustainability Reporting Standards appeared first on SustainCase - Sustainability Magazine.

This article is written for professionals who want to get sustainability reporting right — without wasting time, money, or credibility.

GRI welcomed the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) as a key step towards implementing the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and holding EU market companies accountable for their impacts. The first set of draft ESRS was submitted on 22 November to the European Commission by the Sustainability Reporting Board (SRB) of EFRAG (formerly known as the European Financial Reporting Advisory Group).

GRI actively participated in the development of the ESRS, from the initial phase lead by the Project Task Force to the collaboration with EFRAG, the SRB and Technical Expert Group. The work focused on achieving optimal interoperability between the global GRI Standards, concentrated on impact materiality, and the European ESRS (focused on double materiality). The GRI Standards are, already, the most widely used impact reporting standards by large companies both in the EU and globally.

This article explains the what and why.
Practical implementation is a separate step.

Judy Kuszewski, Chair of GRI’s Global Sustainability Standards Board, said:

“Through a well-established and rigorous due process, the GRI Standards codify the consensus view of global stakeholders on what companies need to disclose about their impacts on the world – allowing stakeholders to make decisions based on facts not perceptions. It has been a pleasure working with EFRAG on the development of the ESRS and sharing our 25 years of experience and knowledge.
The collaboration worked on the basic principle that wherever possible and across all the standards, definitions, concepts, and disclosures would leverage the GRI Standards. This resulted, as EFRAG stated, in a situation where the ESRS are fully aligned or, when full alignment was not possible due to the content of the CSRD mandate, closely aligned with GRI.

Also read:

GRI and ESRS Q&A document now available

GRI Standards: A principled approach to sustainability action

Of course, there will be differences between our global impact-focused standards and the EU double materiality focused standards as prescribed by the CSRD. We are committed to work with EFRAG to provide technical guidance on how to use current GRI based reporting practices and processes to also meet the ESRS needs in addition to jointly working on future standards. This guidance will be published at the time the EU Commission releases the final standards.”

Feeling overwhelmed? That’s normal.

Most professionals reading this are not trying to become sustainability experts.
They simply want to:

• avoid mistakes
• meet expectations
• build something they won’t have to redo next year

That’s exactly how SustainCase is designed.

If any of these sound like you, start here:

 I’m new and don’t know where to begin
 I need to report, but only proportionately
 I’m under time pressure
 I want to do this once and do it properly

How to Begin Sustainability Reporting — Safely

A short, practical orientation used by professionals before they commit time or budget.

Eelco van der Enden, GRI CEO, said:

“From the outset the European Commission has been very vocal about its objective to not reinvent the wheel and build on existing standards. This approach ensures global comparability and limits additional reporting burden for companies. This first set of standards proves that through collaboration global interoperability to the highest extent possible is attainable. Moreover, it sends a clear signal to those companies which have been using the GRI Standards for many years that they are well prepared and can leverage their existing reporting processes.
We look forward to continuing our work in the next months with EFRAG, and the European Commission’s DG FISMA, on the next set of standards to drive interoperability as much as possible. After all, GRI is committed to the creation of a global comprehensive reporting system. We appreciate that such a system will at times need to be combined with jurisdictional reporting requirements reflecting the ambitions, existing legal frameworks, and specific context. The ESRS are a good example of how this can be done very effectively.”

The CSRD, mandating the use of the ESRS for some 50,000 companies, was approved on 10 November 2022 by the European Parliament.

Under the EFRAG-GRI cooperation agreement, signed in July 2021, the two organizations joined each other’s technical expert groups, committing to share information, for standard setting activities and timelines to be aligned as much as possible.

The Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive introduces legislation to significantly expand mandatory sustainability disclosure requirements for EU companies, replacing the current Non-Financial Reporting Directive.

The 2022 KPMG Survey of Sustainability Reporting (published in October) found that the GRI Standards are the world’s most widely used, adopted by 73% of the largest 250 global companies and by 68% of a wider sample of 5,800 businesses globally.

What happens next (if you want this to work):

1. Get oriented
2. Decide scope
3. Build once, not twice
4. Grow capability over time

SustainCase exists to support that journey — proportionately.

78% of the world’s 250 largest companies report in accordance with the GRI Standards

SustainCase was primarily created to demonstrate, through case studies, the importance of dealing with a company’s most important impacts in a structured way, with use of the GRI Standards. To show how today’s best-run companies are achieving economic, social and environmental success – and how you can too.

Research by well-recognised institutions is clearly proving that responsible companies can look to the future with optimism.

7 GRI sustainability disclosures get you started

Any size business can start taking sustainability action

GRI, ISEP, CPD Certified Sustainability courses (2-5 days): Live Online or Classroom  (venue: London School of Economics)

• Exclusive FBRH template to begin reporting from day one
• Identify your most important impacts on the Environment, Economy and People
• Formulate in group exercises your plan for action. Begin taking solid, focused, all-round sustainability action ASAP. 
• Benchmarking methodology to set you on a path of continuous improvement

See upcoming training dates.

This article is based on published information by GRI. For the sake of readability, we did not use brackets or ellipses. However, we made sure that the extra or missing words did not change the publication’s meaning. If you would like to quote these written sources from the original please revert to the following link:

https://www.globalreporting.org/news/news-center/interoperability-between-esrs-and-gri-standards-good-news-for-reporters/

The post Interoperability between ESRS and GRI Standards good news for GRI reporting companies appeared first on SustainCase - Sustainability Magazine.

The CSRD will replace the current regime under the EU Non-Financial Reporting Directive (“NFRD”) and will apply to all large EU companies. Non-EU companies with substantial activity in the EU (with a turnover over €150 million euro in the EU), will also have to comply. In total, approximately 50,000 organisations will need to comply with the CSRD.

The CSRD includes more detailed reporting requirements on a broad range of ESG matters, in accordance with mandatory European sustainability reporting standards. All large companies in the EU will need to disclose data on their impacts on people and the planet, and any sustainability risks they are exposed to.

With the CSRD, there is no ambiguity. Sustainability information, which includes topics within ESG, will need to be treated with the same degree of rigour and suspicion, as financial information.

With the CSRD confirmed:

• ESG is entering the annual reporting process
• Sustainability information will sit alongside financial information
• The amount of data that will have to be collected will greatly increase
• So too will the number of people involved in the new, integrated reporting process
• Sustainability information will be audited

The CSRD has been created to end greenwashing, strengthen the EU’s social market economy and lay the groundwork for sustainability reporting standards at a global level. It is expected to bring greater accountability to ESG reporting across the EU, making sure companies are providing reliable, audited and certified information.

78% of the world’s 250 largest companies report in accordance with the GRI Standards

SustainCase was primarily created to demonstrate, through case studies, the importance of dealing with a company’s most important impacts in a structured way, with use of the GRI Standards. To show how today’s best-run companies are achieving economic, social and environmental success – and how you can too.

Research by well-recognised institutions is clearly proving that responsible companies can look to the future with optimism.

7 GRI sustainability disclosures get you started

Any size business can start taking sustainability action

GRI, ISEP, CPD Certified Sustainability courses (2-5 days): Live Online or Classroom  (venue: London School of Economics)

• Exclusive FBRH template to begin reporting from day one
• Identify your most important impacts on the Environment, Economy and People
• Formulate in group exercises your plan for action. Begin taking solid, focused, all-round sustainability action ASAP. 
• Benchmarking methodology to set you on a path of continuous improvement

See upcoming training dates.
 

This article is based on published information by LEXOLOGY, the European Parliament and Yahoo Finance. For the sake of readability, we did not use brackets or ellipses. However, we made sure that the extra or missing words did not change the publication’s meaning. If you would like to quote these written sources from the original please revert to the following links:

https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=f7935a5e-009f-41dd-adbe-13964ca21694

https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/pt/press-room/20221107IPR49611/sustainable-economy-parliament-adopts-new-reporting-rules-for-multinationals

https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/csrd-debrief-whos-impacted-prepare-142300090.html?

The post European Parliament overwhelmingly approves new CSRD appeared first on SustainCase - Sustainability Magazine.