First Time Receiving ESG Questionnaire: Where to Start

The questionnaire arrived from your customer. Maybe through an email with a spreadsheet attached, maybe as an invitation to register on a platform you've never heard of. The questions ask about carbon emissions, diversity metrics, supply chain due diligence, and policies you may or may not have.

You've successfully run your business for years—or decades—without any of this. Now a customer you value is asking for information that feels completely outside your competence. Where do you even begin?

This guide is for suppliers encountering ESG requests for the first time. No sustainability background required. No judgment about why you haven't done this before. Just a practical starting point.

First, Don't Panic

The urgency you feel is manufactured by unfamiliarity, not by actual complexity. ESG questionnaires look intimidating because they use jargon and cover topics outside your usual business operations. But the underlying requests are mostly straightforward:

• How much energy do you use?
• What policies guide your operations?
• How do you treat your employees?
• What are you doing to reduce environmental impact?

You have answers to these questions. They just need to be organized and formatted in ways you've never been asked to provide before.

Thousands of suppliers are receiving these requests for the first time this year. The customers sending them know that their supply chains include companies at every stage of ESG maturity. They're not expecting perfection from a first response. They're expecting a good-faith effort to provide what you can.

Understand Why This Is Happening

Customer ESG requests aren't random. They're driven by regulation—specifically the EU's Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), which requires large companies to disclose detailed sustainability data including their supply chain's environmental impact.

Your customer isn't asking because they've suddenly become passionate about sustainability (though some have). They're asking because regulators require them to report Scope 3 emissions—the carbon footprint of everything they buy. You're part of what they buy. They need your data to complete their compliance obligations.

This context matters because it tells you what customers actually need: data they can use in their own reports. Not marketing language about your commitment to the environment. Not vague aspirations. Concrete information they can plug into their disclosures.

The Three-Step First Response

Step 1: Review the Questionnaire (1-2 hours)

Before gathering data, understand what's being asked.

Read through the entire questionnaire without trying to answer anything. Note:

• What topics does it cover? (Environment only? Social too? Governance?)
• What format are answers expected in? (Multiple choice? Text? Document uploads?)
• What's the deadline?
• What's mandatory versus optional?
• What questions genuinely don't apply to your business?

Many questionnaires include sections that don't apply to everyone. A service company won't have manufacturing waste data. A domestic supplier won't have international shipping emissions. Identifying what's not applicable saves time chasing data you don't need.

Step 2: Gather What You Already Have (1-2 weeks)

Most ESG data already exists somewhere in your organization. The challenge is knowing where to look.

For environmental questions:

• Utility bills show energy consumption (finance or office management)
• Waste invoices show disposal volumes (operations or facilities)
• Fleet records show fuel consumption (operations or finance)
• Any existing environmental certifications (ISO 14001, etc.)

For social questions:

• HR records have employee counts, turnover, training data
• Safety logs have incident records
• Existing HR policies cover most labor practice questions
• Payroll data can inform wage-related questions

For governance questions:

• Business registration documents show ownership structure
• Any existing code of conduct or ethics policy
• Quality management documentation (ISO 9001, etc.)
• Existing supplier assessment processes

Don't create documents you don't have. If the questionnaire asks for an environmental policy and you don't have one, the honest answer is "No, we don't have a formal environmental policy." That's a legitimate response for a company new to ESG.

Step 3: Complete and Submit (2-4 hours)

With data gathered, work through the questionnaire systematically:

For multiple-choice questions: Select the honest answer. If you don't have something, say so. If you partially meet a criterion, pick the most accurate option and add clarifying notes if text fields allow.

For quantitative questions: Enter the numbers you've gathered. Note your methodology if there's space. Indicate what's measured versus estimated.

For text questions: Keep answers factual and specific. "We track employee safety through monthly incident reports reviewed by management" beats "We are committed to employee wellbeing."

For document uploads: Attach existing documents where relevant. Don't create elaborate new documents just for this questionnaire.

For questions you can't answer: Use "Not applicable" for genuinely irrelevant questions. For questions where you lack data, note that you don't currently track this metric. Leaving fields blank with no explanation is worse than explaining why you can't answer.

Common First-Timer Questions

What if I don't have policies they're asking about?

Many questionnaires ask about environmental policies, human rights policies, supply chain codes of conduct. If you don't have formal documented policies, that's a legitimate answer. "No, we do not currently have a formal environmental policy" is honest. You can add that you're developing one if that's true, but don't claim to have documents that don't exist.

What if my numbers look bad compared to what I assume others report?

You have no idea what others report. And "bad" is relative—a company that actually measures its emissions is more credible than one that claims zero impact. Customers want accurate data, even if that data shows room for improvement. Fabricated good numbers help no one.

What if the deadline is impossible?

Contact your customer contact. Explain that this is your first ESG response and ask if a brief extension is possible. Most customers accommodate reasonable requests—they want your data eventually, not radio silence. If no extension is possible, submit what you can by the deadline with a note about what's still in progress.

Should I hire a consultant?

For a first-time response to a standard customer questionnaire, probably not. The cost-benefit rarely makes sense. If the questionnaire is for a high-stakes assessment (like EcoVadis where your score affects contract retention) or involves complex calculations you can't handle internally, outside help may be worthwhile. For most initial requests, your own staff can handle it.

What if I get it wrong?

Honest mistakes are fixable. If you later realize an answer was inaccurate, contact your customer and provide a correction. This demonstrates integrity and attention to accuracy. What damages relationships isn't errors—it's errors combined with reluctance to acknowledge or fix them.

After You Submit

Once your first response is complete, capture what you learned:

Document your sources. Where did each piece of data come from? Who has it? This makes next year's response dramatically easier.

Note the gaps. What couldn't you answer? What took longest to find? These are the areas to improve before the next request.

Save your answers. You'll receive similar questionnaires from other customers. Having your responses saved means future requests start from 70% complete rather than zero.

Consider what to track going forward. If gathering 2024 energy data required digging through a year of invoices, set up a simple monthly tracking process for 2025. Future you will be grateful.

The Longer Game

Your first ESG questionnaire is the hardest one you'll complete. Every subsequent request benefits from work you've already done.

Companies that treat the first request as a one-time fire drill repeat the scramble every time. Companies that treat it as establishing a foundation—saving answers, documenting sources, beginning to track data—find that the second request takes half the time and the fifth request becomes routine.

The article on building an ESG response system covers how to set this up. But the immediate priority is responding to what's in front of you.

You don't need to transform your company's sustainability practices to answer this questionnaire. You need to provide honest information about where you are today. That's achievable. Start with what you have, acknowledge what you don't, submit by the deadline, and improve from there.

Need a system for this? ESG Passport lets you track ESG data year-round and respond to any questionnaire in hours — not weeks. Free ESG tracking for life. Pro turns your data into finished reports with 200+ automated answer templates.