Reaching CSRD compliance: essential milestones and timelines

This article is a summary of the essential elements to prepare for CSRD compliance, with a focus on practical steps and timelines to guide your process. 🔉If you are more of a listener, you can also access the complete webinar recording here.

What are the milestones I need to reach and by when?

To stay on track for CSRD compliance, you’ll need to work backward from 2026, when the first reports are due, and establish a series of checkpoints to guide your progress. These milestones are crucial for building the foundation of your sustainability data and ensuring it meets audit requirements.

• ‍Double Materiality Assessment (DMA): CSRD starts with a comprehensive assessment of double materiality, a concept that focuses on identifying which topics are “material” to both your business and your stakeholders. This process involves mapping out your value chain, defining impacts, risks, and opportunities (IRO), and scoring each topic to determine its relevance - aka its “materiality”. The DMA isn’t something that can be rushed—it typically requires 3-4 months, giving you time to gather feedback, consult with internal & external stakeholders, and incorporate auditor insights. By proactively involving auditors, you can avoid surprises and ensure that your process aligns with their expectations.
• ‍Data Collection and Audit Preparation: For most companies above 250 employees, the bulk of data collection will occur throughout 2025, leading up to the audit and reporting phase early 2026. Think of this as your main runway, where you gather, verify, and validate data on key metrics. To avoid audit issues, establish a system to keep this data updated and accessible. This way, when it’s time for the final review, you won’t be scrambling to pull everything together.
• ‍Final Reporting Preparations: End of 2025/Early 2026, your focus should shift to finalizing the report itself. This often means preparing your data for the XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) format, as well as ensuring all governance, policy, and target details meet the regulatory requirements. Consider this phase your last checkpoint before submitting: it’s about confirming your data quality, completing the audit trail, and preparing for ongoing monitoring.

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🌹 Tip: Begin your carbon footprint assessment as soon as possible and consider running it in parallel. This is one of the most demanding tasks, as it requires accounting for every relevant factor—energy usage, waste production, transportation, travel, etc.

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Resources: Whom to involve & how much time to plan?

CSRD compliance is a team effort, requiring collaboration from multiple departments and stakeholders. Building a reliable team and creating clear roles is essential for streamlining the data collection and reporting process.

• Assemble a Cross-Functional Team: CSRD compliance can’t be tackled alone. On average, you’ll need to coordinate 10 to 30 contributors, with very heterogeneous levels of knowledge and interest about sustainability. Don’t assume they know about sustainability or CSRD. You’ll need a dedicated core team to steer the project, ideally one person who coordinates the effort (the sustainability manager in most cases) and liaises with contributors across departments. Think of this team as your “CSRD compliance task force,” pulling in key data from HR (e.g., workforce metrics), Finance (financial thresholds), IT (access to data systems), and Production (environmental impact details).
• Define Responsibilities and Checkpoints: Clear role definitions prevent overlap and ensure accountability. For each data point required, assign a specific contributor and define their responsibilities. Initially, you may need 1-3 touchpoints to keep things organized, but over time, a well-defined system will allow contributors to provide data with minimal intervention.‍
• Early and Consistent Auditor Engagement: To stay compliant and avoid missteps, involve your auditors from the beginning. Their insights on regulatory interpretations and audit requirements are essential. This relationship also means fewer surprises during the audit phase and a smoother compliance journey overall.

How to get buy-in from internal teams & from management

CSRD compliance isn’t just a technical requirement: It’s a strategic commitment. For this reason, you’ll need buy-in from both your colleagues and management to ensure the necessary human resources and secure a dedicated budget. Here’s how to communicate the importance of CSRD across your organization effectively.

• Creating a Clear Message for Colleagues: Many team members may view CSRD as an additional “nice-to-have” instead of a critical priority. To shift this mindset, emphasize the compliance aspect of it requiring ESG data to be as reliable as financial data. some text
  • Provide a clear timeline of data submission requirements
  • Explain the reasons behind these timelines
  • Showcase the importance of their input to foster a sense of ownership and urgency
  • Tailor your message based on each department’s focus—some may be driven by sustainability, while others may need to see how their work supports broader business goals 
  • Arrange regular updates on your progress, like hitting scope 1 and 2 emissions targets to further reinforce the importance of their role in this project.
• Communicating with Management and Securing the Budget: The management team’s support is essential, especially when it comes to securing the budget for CSRD compliance. However, they may be managing competing priorities, so your approach should be empathetic and strategic. Help management understand the broader value of CSRD by providing clear benchmarks and cost examples. For instance, you could reference consulting fees for the double materiality assessment or the approaches used by similar companies. And while it may sound obvious, when you request a budget, ask for a range—this allows you to be flexible while still setting realistic budgetary boundaries.
• Identify an Executive Sponsor: Finally, finding a “champion” within management can make a big difference in advocating for CSRD’s importance. This executive sponsor can help communicate your needs to other leaders and support your requests for budget or resources, providing a strong foundation for your efforts.

By setting clear milestones, gathering a strong team, and effectively communicating the importance of CSRD, your organization will be well-positioned to meet these new reporting standards. Embracing this process not only helps with regulatory compliance but also strengthens your company’s commitment to sustainability—a value increasingly important to stakeholders, investors, and society at large. 

You can discuss all this with one of our experts by booking a meeting here:

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