The Workforce Disclosure Initiative (WDI) is the only investor-backed platform for disclosure of company workforce data covering both direct operations and supply chains. It is unique in terms of its scope and ambition covering ten workforce management areas – governance, risk assessment, contractual status and remuneration, gender diversity, stability, training, wellbeing and rights issues. The WDI survey applies to all corporate sectors and covers all geographical regions.
In 2026, the WDI has won the support of more than 20 institutional investors and secured new disclosures to the WDI platform from 142 of the largest listed companies worldwide.
The WDI’s investor signatories request that companies submit as much data as they can in response to the annual survey they will be sent. Responses need to be submitted online via the Nossa Data online reporting platform. All companies our investors are requesting data from will be provided with a response populated from public sources by our AI tool. This response will also receive an automatic score. To find out more about the scoring, please look at our guidance. Every company who reviews the AI response and submits changes formally will receive a new updated score and a feedback call to go through their response. All the data a company submits goes directly to our investor signatories and then companies can choose what other information is made available to the general public. There are some questions whose answers are mandatorily public; this are shown in Excel version of the survey for reference in column H of the “full survey” tab.
The scoring methodology is built around three dimensions: Awareness, Approach, and Action (3A). Awareness measures how well a company recognises and understands workforce-related risks and responsibilities. Approach assesses the policies, governance, and systems it has in place, while Action evaluates how these are implemented, monitored, and improved over time.
Each company receives four scores on a scale of 0–100: an Overall Composite Score and three separate scores for Awareness, Approach, and Action. Scores are calculated at three levels namely Topic, Section, and Company. Topic scores are aggregated into section scores, which are then combined to produce the final company-level results.
The Overall Composite Score provides a summary of a company’s overall performance, while the three 3A scores highlight strengths and gaps across different dimensions. Results are also available at the section and topic levels, providing more detailed insight into performance across specific workforce topics.
The WDI survey and question guidance is structured in a way to support companies to prioritise their responses and progressively increase the level of workforce data they report as they become more accustomed to responding to the survey. There are three main ways companies can prioritise their response.
Organisations that are looking to advance their workforce reporting should aim to complete as many Intermediate tier questions as possible. Companies should also aim to report against all Core Indicators.
Companies should also aim to provide more detailed data for the questions they are already responding to, for example, by providing data that covers more operating locations and a larger proportion of the workforce. They should be meeting all ‘getting started’ criteria in the guidance for every data point they provide, as well as aiming to provide data for more ‘next steps’ criteria. Organisations should also consider how they can provide more data on topics that are traditionally underreported, such as workforce stability.
Companies that are looking to establish themselves as leaders in workforce reporting should be aiming to provide data for as many Comprehensive tier indicators as possible. These are questions that reflect the challenges of collecting and reporting information on aspects which are often overlooked. Leading companies should already be providing detailed data against all Core Indicators and, wherever possible, providing data that covers as large a proportion of the companies’ operations as possible. Leading companies should also be meeting the majority of all guidance criteria (both ‘getting started’ and ‘next steps’) for each question.
To become a WDI lead responder, it is important to recognise that awareness alone is not enough. While understanding your risks and responsibilities is a necessary starting point, real progress comes in approach and action. A lead responder is ultimately defined by tangible results, not just understanding. The more your organisation can show that it has embedded the right frameworks and is driving measurable outcomes on the ground, the more it reflects the qualities of a true lead responder. We are providing best practice examples which will help companies to understand the focus areas better.
Organisations should provide whatever data they currently have and utilise the ‘notes on this topic’ questions to provide any further context around the data they have provided. Companies should not feel concerned about providing partial data, as even limited data is greatly valued by investors. Providing partial data can also help the company identify where there are gaps in their data collection and opportunities to progressively build upon the information the company already has, helping the organisation improve its own reporting.
While companies may be concerned about the potential effects of partial data on their performance, it is important to recognise that, although such data is significant and can meaningfully influence the overall score, it is not the primary determinant. The overall score is intentionally designed to reflect a broader and more comprehensive assessment.
If the company has never carried out the specific actions a question is asking for an example of, companies can outline the steps and procedures the company would take if they were to take that action, clearly indicating that this is what the company would do, not what the company has done. The company should also explain what plans they have, if any, to take this action in the future.
All questions in the WDI survey have been designed so that companies from every sector can provide at least some data. It is inevitable that certain topics will be more salient for certain companies than for others, but companies should aim, and be able to, provide data for every section of the survey, including the sections on the value chain. While service-based companies often lack goods-focused supply chains of an equivalent scale to manufacturing organisations, it is extremely unlikely that they will have no value chain to report on at all, as service-based companies often have upstream value chains that consist of other services, tools, software and so on. As the value chain sections consider the whole value chain, companies can and should also consider the downstream value chain (the process of getting products from the company to the end user), rather than just the upstream value chain (the process of getting materials to the manufacturer) in their answers.
The ‘getting started’ criteria in the guidance can serve as a helpful guide as to the information that may be more appropriate for organisations with less extensive value chains. Additionally, as the WDI’s focus is transparency, and not performance, companies will not be penalised for responding to questions with limited data. Where a question asks about value chain practices that the organisation does not engage in, the company can simply state this.
The scoring methodology is built around three dimensions: Awareness, Approach, and Action (3A). Awareness measures how well a company recognises and understands workforce-related risks and responsibilities. Approach assesses the policies, governance, and systems it has in place, while Action evaluates how these are implemented, monitored, and improved over time.
Each company receives four scores on a scale of 0–100: an Overall Composite Score and three separate scores for Awareness, Approach, and Action. Scores are calculated at three levels namely Topic, Section, and Company. Topic scores are aggregated into section scores, which are then combined to produce the final company-level results.
The Overall Composite Score provides a summary of a company’s overall performance, while the three 3A scores highlight strengths and gaps across different dimensions. Results are also available at the section and topic levels, providing more detailed insight into performance across specific workforce topics.
The new WDI scoring methodology moves beyond assessing whether information is disclosed and places greater emphasis on the quality, maturity, and effectiveness of a company’s workforce management practices. While disclosure remains important, the new approach evaluates how well companies demonstrate awareness of workforce issues, the strength of their policies and processes, and evidence of implementation and outcomes.
The methodology also provides a more nuanced and structured assessment, enabling stronger benchmarking across companies and clearer identification of strengths and areas for improvement. In addition, it offers more detailed topic-level insights, helping investors and companies better understand performance, support stewardship and engagement activities, and assess workforce-related risks and opportunities.
Public response scores will be available through the investor-facing dashboard, where investors can access individual company scorecards and review overall and detailed scoring results. In 2026, the scores of the self-disclosed responses will only be available to the investor signatories if the company chooses to make it viewable to them.
We welcome all feedback from all stakeholders at all times. Please email your TRF contact or WDI@thomsonreuters.com with any thoughts you have. We try to incorporate as much feedback as possible.
Opting out of modules may reduce your overall score and may prevent scores from being generated for certain topics. Because WDI scoring assesses disclosure holistically, the impact will vary depending on the information provided elsewhere in the questionnaire. Please also review the relevant 3A tags before opting out of a module to understand the potential scoring implications. Further guidance on maximum achievable scores for different opt-out scenarios will be shared following the beta testing period. To maintain fairness and comparability across participating companies, module-level scores will not be provided in 2026, although module-based benchmarking may be considered from 2027 onwards.
We may make minor adjustments to the scoring criteria following the pilot year based on stakeholder feedback and the outcomes of the initial scoring exercise. However, our intention is to maintain a consistent scoring structure and methodology to enable meaningful year-on-year comparisons. We do not anticipate any major changes to the framework over the next three years.
Access to scoring results may be expanded to a broader audience in the future to support knowledge sharing, enhance transparency, and strengthen corporate accountability. However, there are currently no plans to make companies’ self-disclosed data fully public.