In the previous article, The New Role of Professional Judgment Under ESRS, we explored how professional judgment has become more visible under ESRS and why defensibility now matters more than completeness. While that clarification was reassuring for many teams, it leaves a practical question: What should we do differently now?
Across organizations, this question has become the central operational challenge. The ESRS reset does not remove work. It changes where to focus efforts.
Under the original ESRS architecture, sustainability teams organized their work around managing complexity. Reporting cycles were often dominated by checklist execution, reactive data collection and coordination. These issues were driven by deadlines rather than priorities.
The emerging workflow looks different. Instead of managing volume, teams are increasingly focused on prioritization, interpretation and alignment with strategy. The emphasis is shifting from assembling disclosures to understanding the impacts risks and opportunities in a more structured way.
This shift is less visible than datapoint reductions, but far more consequential for day-to-day work.
In many organizations, that information is fragmented across procurement records, specification sheets, supplier declarations, ERP systems, sustainability teams and local functions. The compliance gap may therefore appear in the data before it appears in the packaging.
In practice, experienced teams are reallocating efforts across three areas.
DMA and core analysis
More time is now spent refining the double materiality assessment early in the cycle, ensuring that scoping is robust and aligned with how the business operates. This often reduces downstream complexity and avoids the need for repeated adjustments later in the process.
Internal coordination
Stronger collaboration with finance, risk, strategy and operations teams has become essential. As reporting becomes more selective, alignment across functions helps ensure consistency in assumptions, language and conclusions.
Narrative alignment
Teams are investing more time toensure coherence across sections of the report. Metrics, narrative disclosures, governance descriptions and strategy discussions increasingly need to reinforce each other rather than develop in parallel. This is not a reduction in effort. It is a reallocation toward higher-value work.
The ESRS reset also allows teams to scale back certain legacy practices without increasing risk.
Once materiality conclusions are clear, many organizations are reducing the time they spend on exhaustive bottom-up exercises that add limited insight. Other groups are narrowing data collection efforts to focus on genuine decision-useful information rather than marginal datapoints included for completeness.
Teams are also moving away from duplicative narratives across sections of the report. Streamlining content often improves clarity while reducing workload.
These efforts are not about doing less. It is about doing better.
The strongest teams are adjusting their workflows in practical ways, simplifying internal processes, standardizing how decisions are documented and strengthening governance around key judgments.
They are also investing more time in early-stage planning and internal review, which reduces last-minute pressure during reporting cycles.
And they are becoming more deliberate about where they focus attention with clarity and consistency increasingly taking precedence over volume.
These shifts are gradual but noticeable across the market.
As workflows evolve, a broader strategic question emerges: What should organizations do with the additional space created by simplification?
In the final article, we will explore how companies can use this regulatory breathing room to strengthen the integration of sustainability into decision-making and strategy.
