Before a board can determine which obligations apply, it must be established how large the company is. Size is not a fixed given but the outcome of multiple counts: number of employees, revenue, balance sheet total, and sometimes a combination of these at group level rather than at the level of a single entity. Which thresholds exactly apply and from when differs per regulation and is regularly adjusted. You look up those current figures in the source itself; this page is about how you substantiate the count itself, not about which figure is currently the limit.
A company that falls just below a threshold generally has fewer obligations than a company that falls above it. That seems simple, but practice is less sharp. Size is often measured over a period of several years, so that a one-time outlier does not immediately lead to new obligations and a one-time decline does not immediately lead to their disappearance. A company also sometimes grows or shrinks through acquisition, spin-off, or a change in group structure, which can make the count turn out differently, retroactively, than expected. Anyone who assesses size only on the basis of the current financial year runs the risk that an external party reaches a different conclusion based on earlier years.
Whether the count should take place at the level of the parent, a subsidiary, or the entire group is a question that is separate from the size itself and yet directly affects it. A subsidiary that is small on its own strength can still fall under an obligation because the group to which it belongs is not. This relates to how the legal form of the company is established, because the legal structure determines which entities count in the consolidation and which do not. Without a documented line of reasoning about this level, the size determination is technically incomplete, even if the figure itself is correct.
A size determination that only exists as an internal assumption is difficult to defend afterward during a review. What is needed is documentation that shows: which figures were used, over which period, at which level, and according to which definition. That documentation must also indicate who made the count and who approved the outcome. That is precisely the distinction that matters in what counts as evidence for an obligation: a figure without a traceable source and without an owner is not evidence, however correct the figure may be. Holding up afterward does not mean that the outcome never changes, but that the reasoning behind the outcome can be reconstructed at any moment.
In practice, the substantiation of size is often spread across multiple departments: finance has the revenue figures, HR has the employee numbers, and legal affairs has the group structure. No one has the overview that combines all three into one coherent count. This is a recognizable pattern that also recurs elsewhere, as described under where evidence becomes scattered within an organization. For size, this risk is greater than for other obligations, because the outcome of the count is often the first question asked during an external review, and an incomplete answer to that first question undermines the credibility of all subsequent answers.
Size does not stand on its own. It interacts with the countries in which the company is active, because international presence affects the way of consolidating, and with what the company actually offers, because activities in certain sectors lead to a different reading of thresholds. The sector itself also plays a role; see how the sector co-determines which ESG rules apply. Anyone who isolates size from these other factors runs the risk of producing a count that is correct in itself but still does not align with the actual obligations.
Once the size has been established and substantiated, a follow-up question arises that is just as practical: who carries out the tasks that follow from the applicable obligations, and how much of that work is structural in nature. The FTE TO AI work scan calculates per task which part of the work can be taken over by AI, which is helpful once it is clear which reporting and review tasks the size determination entails.
Vraag maar welke verplichting op u van toepassing is, en waaraan u dat kunt aantonen.
Answers come from this site’s knowledge base. Not tailored advice, and not a scan of your company.