Key takeaways
- Trusted data is a business requirement. Sustainability data cannot live apart from finance, risk, and governance if companies want to stand behind their claims with confidence.
- AI only adds value when it is grounded in governance. Speed is useful, but trusted outcomes depend on connected, controlled, and traceable data, supported by human judgment and strong oversight.
- Sustainability is more than a compliance checkbox. When companies manage sustainability with the same discipline as financial performance and engage across the enterprise to understand a company’s underlying sustainability ecosystem, it strengthens transparency, resilience, and long-term decision-making.
In 2025, the mandate for business leaders changed. Geopolitical uncertainty and the rapid adoption of AI exposed enterprise-wide data gaps with real consequences: delayed operational decisions, regulatory fines, legal exposure, and declining investor confidence. Data clarity became a top-tier business risk. For sustainability leaders, this means we no longer just report the numbers. We defend the integrity of our non-financial data against unprecedented regulatory and AI-driven scrutiny. And in many organizations, sustainability leaders were the first to confront this paradigm shift.
This new reality became clear to many of us while building our sustainability reports and tracking down data across our organizations. The data exists, but it lives in disconnected systems, teams, and processes. This made it hard to track progress, connect sustainability efforts to financial outcomes, and show value in a way executives and boards could actually use.
At Workiva, we know that challenge well because we see it from both sides. We work with organizations navigating these pressures every day, and we face them ourselves. We are customer #1 for our own AI-powered platform, and rely on it to manage the trustworthy data that closes the gap between what we claim, report, and actually do.
Workiva created our 2025 Sustainability Report using our sustainability management solution and Workiva AI to manage disclosures, track sustainability targets and carbon data, and accelerate preparation of our report. Our sustainability report is a practical example of how connected data, internal controls, and AI can work together to strengthen trust, improve efficiency, and support better decision-making.
Where we led in 2025
Empowering human judgment with governed AI. AI promised to solve a lot of problems for reporting practitioners. But off-the-shelf AI tools still lack the security and guardrails that reporting practitioners need to manage and analyze sensitive business data. The AI-powered Workiva platform allowed us to reduce manual effort without sacrificing oversight.
Mapping our sustainability initiatives to the UN Sustainable Development Goals could have taken hours. Using Workiva AI, our team created 17 summaries in less than 30 minutes. Every AI-generated summary was flagged for human review, which helped us preserve the nuance of our qualitative disclosures. In the end, we aligned with nine UN Sustainable Development Goals across our report and reinforced a principle that drives our innovation: AI is most useful when it is grounded in trusted data and governed workflows.
Solving the double materiality puzzle. For the first time, Workiva completed a voluntary Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD)-aligned double materiality assessment (DMA). For a SaaS company, that meant looking beyond our carbon footprint—examining the impacts, risks, and opportunities tied to our workforce, business conduct, product governance, responsible AI, cybersecurity, and data privacy. It also required deeper cross-functional collaboration and understanding to connect sustainability to our broader business strategy, value chain, and financials. Getting internal teams to agree on what sustainability materiality means in practice was the real work—the platform structured the process, but the conversations still had to happen.
We completed the DMA using the CSRD capabilities in the Workiva platform. Our results are consistent with Wave 1 reports from the technology sector and provide a clearer view of the sustainability topics most relevant to our business, from both financial and impact perspectives, and serve as a foundation to anchor to as we prepare future disclosures.
Meeting the mark and setting new goals. Based on 2025 data, we are on track to or have exceeded our sustainability targets across Innovation, Environment, and People & Philanthropy. We achieved our target for customer adoption of Workiva AI and maintained operational net-zero across our value chain. We also reported an employee engagement score 91% and 71% employee participation in philanthropic programs.
Those results did more than show progress. They gave us a clearer basis for what comes next.
Sustainability is not a box-checking exercise. It is a catalyst for growth and innovation. As part of our ongoing commitment to create long-term value, we are refining our carbon and AI targets to reflect what we have learned, how our platform is evolving, and what our stakeholders increasingly expect from us. Additionally, we are broadening our People & Philanthropy targets to meet the needs of an expanding global workforce.
Shaping the future of reporting. We remained engaged with global organizations at the forefront of reporting standards, transparency, and accountability, including EFRAG, the World Economic Forum, and the United Nations. Workiva was recognized as a Friend of EFRAG for both financial and sustainability reporting, the only company to receive that distinction.
What comes next
As sustainability continues to evolve, it is clear that trusted data must remain the foundation for creating long-term value. When sustainability data is connected to finance, risk, and governance, it strengthens trust and helps organizations move forward with confidence. We invite you to download and read Workiva’s 2025 Sustainability Report.
