Workiva’s Executive Benchmark Survey 2026 polled 302 institutional investors and 1,497 executives and sustainability practitioners across North America, Latin America, Europe, and the Asia Pacific region.

This blog discusses its four main findings.

1. Companies are scaling back their sustainability communications, not their commitments

It’s noticeable that we hear less about the sustainability initiatives of companies across sectors. This report confirms that 43% of companies surveyed admitted that they’ve become more cautious in how they communicate externally about sustainability over the past year.

However, the report finds that only 3% of companies have actually scaled back sustainability initiatives over the past year, so they are carrying on with their sustainability work.

2. Investors are still invested in ESG

It’s likely that despite an uncertain, maybe even unfavourable, political climate, companies have not given up on ESG because investors are still asking for ESG-related data.

According to this report, 94% of investors surveyed said they consider ESG factors. 97% say both financial and non-financial data are essential for assessing long-term risk.

3. Companies are driven by profitability, not risk

The most popular driver of companies’ sustainability efforts is financial performance and profitability (30%), while only 12% of survey respondents cited risk mitigation as the primary driver of their companies’ sustainability efforts.

This shows how the attitude to ESG has shifted over the last 20 years. Its foundations were firmly in assessing non-financial risks. Practitioners had to work hard to convince financial institutions that measuring these risks can lead to increased profitability – a debate they appear to have won.

The next big challenge is in raising awareness of climate risks. Only 42% of institutional investors surveyed said climate-related risks such as extreme weather are material to their investment decisions. This is in contrast to the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2026, which puts extreme weather events as the number one global risk over the next ten years, with other climate-related risks also ranking very highly.

4. Investors want to see high-quality data

The report shows rising demands for high-quality and structured sustainability data, with investors preferring companies that disclose more, not less. Obtaining and analysing such data remains a challenge.

“More than half of leaders and practitioners say a data problem is limiting their strategic impact at work, whether it’s not enough real time data (29%) or limited access to other departments siloed data (28%).”

There is a lot more information about the perception of sustainability data in the main report, which can be viewed here.

The headline for this Executive Benchmark Survey 2026 is “Data pressures mount as instability continues”. The most worrying aspect of the report is that less than half of investors deem climate risks material, which is contrary to the views of many who believe that climate risk is material to every business.

However, there is a lot of positivity that can be found in this report. Companies are not giving up on sustainability work despite communicating it less, no doubt driven by the fact that investors are still demanding sustainability data. The issues with the quality of this data remain, but there is an understanding that technology can help. With AI developing quickly, no doubt, many of these issues will be addressed in 2026 and beyond.