Wannon Water wins prestigious international award for its community engagement program

Wannon Water has been named both 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, presented on October 25 at the IAP2 Australasia Conference in Brisbane, recognises the high quality of Wannon Water’s engagement program, which 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 had embarked on since 2017 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 to 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.”

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

Wannon Water’s engagement program has also been recognised positively by customers, stakeholders and regulators, and 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,” Ms King said.

“We used a mix of methodologies to capture broad and targeted feedback from across South West Victoria, ultimately refining customer insights from more than 7,700 instances of engagement. This represents 17% of Wannon Water’s customer base and 7.7% of the service region’s total population.

“These insights directly influenced customer outcomes, capital works, operational priorities, and customer tariffs in our price submission.”