Wannon Water wins global award for core values

Wannon Water has been named the Australasian and International Organisation of the Year in the prestigious International Association for Public Participation (IAP2) Core Values Awards for its customer and community engagement.

Wannon Water has been named the Australasian and International Organisation of the Year in the prestigious International Association for Public Participation (IAP2) Core Values Awards for its customer and community engagement.

The awards were presented on October 25 at the IAP2 Australasia Conference in Brisbane. They recognised the high quality of Wannon Water’s engagement program. It is designed to capture customer feedback to inform Wannon Water’s decision-making.

General Manager Community & Corporate Services Kellie King said Wannon Water’s award submission – Share your thoughts. Shape our Future – Engaging Wannon – highlighted the transformational journey the organisation has embarked on since 2017. It has worked towards best practice customer and community engagement, with the vision of becoming a truly customer-centric organisation.

“We have been strengthening our engagement program year-on-year. It helps us ensure our customers are involved in the decisions that affect them and that we understand their needs and expectations,” she said. “These awards are fantastic recognition of the quality of our engagement program. We’re really proud that customer and community engagement is now deeply embedded in shaping and achieving strategic and practical outcomes for our community.”

What are the awards about?

IAP2 is the peak body for the community and stakeholder engagement sector. The awards encourage excellence, quality, and innovation in the field, as well as alignment with the IAP2 Core Values.

Wannon Water’s engagement program has also been recognised positively by customers, stakeholders and regulators. It was instrumental in the organisation’s 2023-28 Price Submission, receiving the Essential Services Commission’s highest possible rating (“Leading”) for customer engagement.

“From 2018 to 2022, we executed our most extensive engagement program ever to inform our customer-focused 2023-28 Price Submission, a key five-year strategic plan for our services and prices,” King said. “We used a mix of methodologies to capture broad and targeted feedback across South West Victoria. Ultimately, it saw us refine customer insights from more than 7,700 instances of engagement. This represents 17 per cent of Wannon Water’s customer base and 7.7 per cent of the service region’s total population. These insights directly influenced customer outcomes, capital works, operational priorities, and customer tariffs in our price submission.”

Wannon Water has launched its 2023 community engagement roadshow. Staff will visit 12 locations in South West Victoria to seek insights from their communities. For a list of times and locations, visit engage.wannonwater.com.au

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