How Hershey Simplifies SEC Reporting, SOX, and ESG

The Hershey Co.’s focus is making more moments of goodness. Hershey has brought financial reporting, internal controls, and ESG teams together in the Workiva platform to create audit-ready reports of its corporate performance. Now all three teams can spend more time tracking, analyzing, and driving the snacking company’s financial and non-financial goodness goals, not just reporting on them.  

For more than a century, The Hershey Co. has made tasty snacks while staying rooted in its values of togetherness, integrity, making a difference, and excellence. It tells that story in multiple regulatory and voluntary reports each year as investors, corporate customers, and stakeholders seek details of the sustainability of the business based on financial and non-financial factors.

“We’re an agriculture-based company that’s reliant on communities around the world and a healthy Earth to deliver the products that our consumers know and love,” said Whitney Mayer, Director of Global Sustainability and ESG at The Hershey Co.

One platform for assured integrated reporting


The publicly traded company needed data, people, and processes to measure and manage the resources it uses to deliver its products and then report that story to stakeholders. That led to the search for an ESG software solution to streamline data collection from its many locations and make the whole ESG reporting process more efficient for data providers, writers, designers, reviewers, approvers, and eventually third-party assurance providers.

“We specifically were looking at ESG software as an opportunity for us to create a single source of truth, that one-stop shop for data collection, controls, collaboration, editing, publication, you name it,” said Rachael Staab, Manager of ESG and Sustainability Reporting. They didn’t have to look far, thanks to Hershey’s financial reporting team.

A game-changer for financial reporting

The SEC reporting team at Hershey had been using the Workiva solution, initially just to prepare its annual 10-K filings, quarterly 10-Qs, and select 8-Ks.

Over the years, with encouragement from North America Controller Jonathan Gregory, Hershey started preparing more SEC filings, including its proxy statement, in the Workiva platform.

One of the main benefits came from a powerful Workiva feature that allows users to link data from a single source to multiple reports. Updating a number or text at the source automatically updates all linked locations, saving teams hours of changing data manually. 

“When we put in our data for our 10-Q, it’s being fed right into our 10-Q as well as into our earnings release. You put it in once, and it’s in all the places it needs to be,” said Nicole Speacht, Manager of External Reporting and Technical Accounting at Hershey.

“With linking, we’re also able to turn around last-minute changes without much pressure,” Jonathan said.

Internal controls management with Workiva

Hershey’s internal audit team then chose Workiva for internal controls management.

“First of all, we wanted a solution that was efficient, easy to use, and easy to roll out and extend to new users,” said Jon Laubenstine, Vice President, Internal Audit at The Hershey Co. “Number 2, obviously given that we're talking about financial reporting and controls and the status, we wanted a solution that had a good reputation of being secure. Then the third thing was ideally we wanted some type of an integrated platform that would be used in other areas of the company as well.”

What Jon’s internal audit teammates appreciate about the Workiva platform:

• Ease of use

• Security

• Ability for other teams to use the platform

• Enablement of flexible but repeatable internal audit processes

• Dashboards for tracking status of testing, reviews, and approvals

“It’s very easy to manage a very large body of work using the solution,” Jon said. “Having a solution like Workiva is really helpful because it puts everything in one place. It’s very organized. I can manage and monitor teams based in the U.S. and teams based abroad in terms of the progress on testing, the status of issues, and remediation. It really helps to keep everything on track and very manageable.”

Hershey reports not just financial results but key non-financial environmental, social, and governance data too. 

“As we looked at ESG, Workiva was a solution that made sense for us,” Jon said.

Adding the Workiva ESG software solution

Because Workiva had already undergone security reviews for use by the financial reporting team, it was easier to procure Workiva for ESG reporting. It was implemented in about three to four months.

Rachael had reviewed several ESG software options during her career at different organizations. “When I heard that Workiva was an option for us, I was like, ‘Yes. How soon and how fast can we sign that contract?’ I knew it was one of the best options out there from an ESG program perspective,” she said.

Why Workiva for ESG

More than 100 subject matter experts contribute to Hershey’s roughly 130-page sustainability report, plus a half dozen additional disclosures that cover more than 800 metrics, Whitney said.

What appealed to The Hershey Co. about the Workiva solution for ESG reporting was the ability to bring data collection and controls documentation together in one platform, dashboards for tracking progress, process automation, and ESG Explorer.

Before implementing Workiva for ESG reporting, Rachael remembers having to resolve more than 800 comments across 35 PDFs to consolidate into one PDF to hand off to an external design agency to create the sustainability report. The process took two weeks.

The next year, with everyone working together in the Workiva platform, she was able to clear 600+ comments within six hours so the design agency could return a fresh PDF within 48 hours.

The Workiva difference

Features that the Hershey financial reporting, internal audit, and ESG teams find especially sweet about Workiva:

• Certification: Manage sign-offs and approvals without having to send a single email

• Connected data: APIs and connectors allow for data to flow directly from source systems to reporting workspaces

• ESG Explorer: This tool, embedded in the ESG solution from Workiva, enables users to browse some of the most popular ESG frameworks and standards in the same platform where they prepare their reports. “I think it’s really helpful to see exactly how this one metric could feed into GRI, SASB, TCFD,” Rachael said.

• Linking: Teams can take data from a single source of truth and link it to multiple reports or spreadsheets where it needs to appear. When information changes, they can update it at the source and automatically update all linked instances in seconds. “Being able to link your documents was the selling point of Workiva’s solution,” said Jonathan.

• Real-time cloud collaboration: “The ability for multiple people to be in the document at once is absolutely the most critical piece to me,” Nicole said.

• In-platform commenting: “We can comment back and forth and have almost a real-time dialogue although we're spread across the globe and many time zones,” said Rachael, who is based in Minnesota. “That was one of the things I didn’t know I needed, and I didn’t realize how helpful it would be until I started using it,” said Nicole, based in Hershey, Pennsylvania. “Again, game-changer.”

• Comment labels: The ESG team and their external design agency use this feature to color-code comments so they can quickly see whether an internal or external contributor should respond, for example

• Designed reporting: “We were able to import our custom fonts and logos directly into Workiva,” Rachael said. 

“When I came to Hershey and Workiva was already in place, I said, ‘This is an absolute game-changer and this is utterly incredible.’ It was super easy to quickly adapt to the different features of the Workiva platform and understand how it works,” said Nicole, the manager of external reporting. “I immediately saw the benefits and the efficiencies that it brought to the overall process.”

“Then it had even more features that I hadn't even thought of or knew I needed and wanted. It exceeded expectations,” Nicole said. “One of the things I love about Workiva is it gives us more time to do critical thinking and understand the story of what’s going on this quarter and spend less time just inputting information.”

“I could never ever go back to external reporting without Workiva,” Nicole said.

See how your financial reporting, ESG, and GRC (governance, risk, compliance) teams can use the Workiva platform.