‘Don’t be afraid to push back’: Demant’s sustainability head on working with auditors

Siri Teilmann-Ibsen reflects on the Danish healthcare firm’s first mandatory CSRD report

Demant was one of the very first companies out of the blocks with its mandatory EU sustainability statement in February.  

The Danish healthcare provider, which specialises in hearing and communication aids, published 55 pages of information in line with the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD). 

Despite the current uncertainty around the future of the CSRD, Demant’s director of sustainability, Siri Teilmann-Ibsen, has some advice for other firms undertaking such disclosures. 

First, she says, set boundaries with auditors.  

“I would advise people to not be afraid to push back, unless you have an unlimited budget for assurance.” 

Sustainability information disclosed under CSRD is subject to limited assurance from the first report, but the lack of guidance from regulators has led to uncertainty about what’s sufficient. 

Earlier this year, Vodafone’s global head of sustainability and transparency said her biggest wish would be for the assurance requirements to be delayed, and Teilmann-Ibsen agrees that it would have been “beneficial” to phase them in. 

She describes auditors as “overly cautious”, but acknowledges that’s part of their job.  

It did mean her team “had to push back quite a bit during the process,” though, challenging the auditors on what information was really necessary. 

“It was clear they were used to a financial audit, but limited assurance on sustainability data is so different,” Teilmann-Ibsen says. 

Here, collaboration internally helped. 

“It was useful to have the input of finance, who could also put their foot down and say ‘this is too much detail’,” she tells REP.  

Ultimately, she thinks assurance – which was provided by PwC – improved the firm’s reporting. 

The European Commission is required to adopt a standard on limited assurance by October 2026, but has recently said it will publish “targeted assurance guidelines” before then, to provide some more clarity.  

Growing team  

Demant added three ESG reporting specialists to its finance department in 2023, and expanded Teilmann-Ibsen’s sustainability team.  

“Before starting work on this, I had a very, very small team and we didn’t work with finance on sustainability reporting,” she says. 

“There are now three people in the ESG reporting team, when there used to be zero, and I have two more people in my team. So we have four.” 

Last year, the CSRD report was “more-or-less” a full-time job for three of those new additions, Teilmann-Ibsen estimates. 

Still, Demant needed consultants to help in areas where there was a lack of guidance, such as the Double Materiality Assessment (DMA).   

“We wanted to be sure it was done according to the standards, so we decided to get some help there,” Teilmann-Ibsen says.  

And it was worth the hassle. 

“If you do the DMA right, you get a lot out of it. It’s not just about reporting, it’s also about looking at your business and your strategy and checking to see if you are doing things well.” 

Teilmann-Ibsen tells REP she thinks there will be less reliance on external support in the future.  

“I don’t see much need for consultants for us anymore,” she notes. 

“And maybe not for those in the second wave either, because they can look at what has gone before,” she says, referring to large companies that weren’t captured in the initial phase of CSRD, but will be in the coming years. 

Even if companies do decide to tap external experts, Teilmann-Ibsen believes they should still build up internal capabilities, including a strong knowledge of the European Sustainability Reporting Standards that underpin CSRD.  

“You need to understand the standards to get the value out of the process,” she says.