Anywhere from a few hours to several weeks. The difference has little to do with the questionnaire and almost everything to do with whether the data is already organized.
Suppliers who take weeks are reconstructing: utility bills, headcount from HR, policy documents that may or may not exist. Suppliers who finish in a day already have the data where they can find it. The questionnaire is entry, not search.
| Readiness | Planning range |
|---|---|
| No ESG tracking; first questionnaire | Two to six weeks |
| Basic tracking, no central system | Three to seven days |
| Central data, no standard answers | One to two days |
| Central data plus standard answers | A few hours |
The ranges in this guide are planning estimates, not measurements. For a figure for your own situation, the free time estimator turns questionnaire type and data readiness into an hours estimate.
What takes the time
Most questionnaires contain three kinds of question.
Yes/no policy and practice questions. Do you have an environmental policy? Do you train employees? Do you track incidents? Seconds, if you know your operations. The only delay is uncertainty about whether something exists or applies.
Quantitative fields. Energy, headcount, waste, water, emissions. Fast if tracked; slow if reconstructed. Twelve months of utility bills added by hand takes hours. A spreadsheet with monthly figures takes a minute.
Document uploads. Environmental policy, code of conduct, certificates, audit reports. Fast with a folder of current versions. Slow if you have to search, check dates, or write documents that do not exist.
The bottleneck is data availability, not question difficulty.
Ranges by readiness
No tracking; first response: two to six weeks. The usual starting point for a small supplier. The data exists — bills are paid, employees exist, a basic safety policy is probably somewhere — but it is scattered. Week one goes to understanding what is asked; week two to locating data and documents; week three to filling in, finding gaps, and deciding how to handle them; the final days to review. For a first ESG questionnaire, several weeks is normal, and the work reduces every later response.
Basic tracking, no central system: three to seven days. Energy tracked monthly, HR has headcount and incidents, policies exist as files. The problem is retrieval: one or two days chasing colleagues, a day assembling, a day reviewing and handling gaps.
Central data, no standard answers: one to two days. Everything in one place: energy figures known, policies in a named folder with current versions, similar questions answered before. The work is entering data.
Central data plus standard answers: a few hours. With a response system — standard answers to common questions, data fields ready, policies filed and dated — a new questionnaire from a new customer is copying, adapting, and submitting. The realistic best case for suppliers who receive several questionnaires a year and have invested in the setup.
By section
Environmental (energy, water, waste, emissions). From under an hour to a full day, depending on whether the data is logged or reconstructed from bills and estimates. Carbon calculation takes longest when working from raw fuel and electricity data. The free carbon calculator handles the conversion factors.
Social and labor (headcount, training hours, incidents). Minutes to a few hours. HR has it; the question is how quickly they can pull it.
Governance and policy. Minutes if policies exist and are current. Days if a supplier code of conduct or environmental policy has to be written — or a minute to answer honestly that it does not exist.
Supply chain. Often the slowest. Questions about your own suppliers' ESG performance, emissions, or labor practice are hard because most small suppliers have not asked their suppliers. If this is missing ESG data, "not currently tracked; plan to develop by [date]" is faster and more honest than producing something from nothing.
What slows responses most
Internal bottlenecks. Finance for utilities, HR for headcount and training, operations for waste and safety, leadership for policies. Waiting on colleagues stretches timelines. Send all requests at once, not in sequence.
Ambiguous questions. Does "total energy consumption" include fleet fuel? Does "health and safety incidents" mean near misses or only recordable injuries? Clarifying with the customer takes time. The ESG response checklist sets out the standard definitions most frameworks use.
First-time calculations. Scope 1 and 2 from raw utility and fuel data under the GHG Protocol is not complicated, but it takes time the first time. With the methodology saved, later calculations take minutes.
Policy gaps discovered mid-response. Realizing there is no formal environmental policy or supplier code of conduct forces a choice: write it now (days) or note the gap (seconds). Be honest about which the timeline allows.
A 48-hour deadline
Triage. Sort every question into three groups: answerable now, answerable with a quick data pull, not answerable without significant work. Answer the first group immediately. For the second, send one message to HR, finance, and operations together. For the third, write "not currently tracked" with a date.
If several questionnaires arrive at once — common when one major customer triggers others — one internal data request covers all of them. The deadline guide has the full triage and the wording for the customer; multiple questionnaires covers the overlap.
Reducing response time permanently
Suppliers who answer in hours have made one investment: an ESG data file kept current through the year. Not sophisticated software. A spreadsheet updated monthly with energy, water, waste, headcount, and safety figures, plus a folder of current policies, covers most of what questionnaires ask. When a request arrives, the numbers are read off a page. Setting up ESG tracking in 20 minutes covers the minimum system.
The other component is standard answers: language for the questions that recur across frameworks, from customer spreadsheets to the EFRAG VSME standard. Your approach to environmental management, your labor commitments, your supplier engagement — these do not change between questionnaires. Write them once; adapt rather than rewrite.
The expectation to set internally
First questionnaire, nobody has done one before: budget two to three weeks for a quality response, and tell the customer: "This is our first formal ESG questionnaire and we want to provide accurate data. We are targeting [date]."
Responded before, no system: three to five days. System and standard answers: a day. Communicate the timeline up front rather than miss a deadline silently.
The gap between organized and unorganized suppliers is measured in weeks. The setup to close it is measured in hours.