Dean Banks is the CEO of Ventia, one of the leading infrastructure businesses across Australia and New Zealand.
At the Social Value Conference 2025, we sat down with him to discuss the rise of Social Value in the Australian context, its importance to Ventia’s people, and the importance of measuring and demonstrating impact.
My view is that Social Value means the same in pretty much every territory – but there’s relativity to definition.
Social Value for us is about improving the lives of people in the communities we serve and making sure that local money is spent wisely and reinvested in the local community, to make a lasting legacy that’s more positive for future generations.
Ventia is a people business – people are at the heart of our organisation. The people that work at Ventia work and serve in the communities where they live. So, it’s important for them to be proud about the Ventia badge and the work they deliver.
This is a great opportunity for them to feel good about the organisation they work for and the value it brings to their communities.
Being a new entry into the Australian market, we could take all the years of understanding and challenge that had occurred in the UK, and gazump that and move straight to latest practice in Australia.
The second thing is about sharing success stories to get people to buy in. The more success stories we can have really brings other people on board. We’ve done a fantastic job of talking to our customers, and hopefully them then talking to third parties, building the momentum.
We’re really proud today that over 80 Australian entities have bought into this process.
The first thing for us around Social Value was “How do you measure it?” How do you show that you’ve been successful, and can you validate that?
It’s one thing for an organisation to say this is the Social Value you bring. It’s another thing to have a standard measure and be able to compare and benchmark versus others.
The Social Value Portal relationship has allowed us to bring that verification to the process and be able to demonstrate the value we bring to the communities we serve.
I want to learn and be educated, but I also want to support our team so we can build momentum around Social Value at Ventia moving forward. So it’s great to hear lots of stories of success.
Social Value is more mature in the UK and the European markets than it is in Australia. So hopefully we can take the best ideas to Australia now and embed them in our organisation.
I want everything - I want to pick up everything I can at the Social Value Conference!
The key thing for me is to go back and be able to validate what we’re doing by showing those success stories, because if people start to say, “I could deliver that,” then it becomes infectious and builds momentum.
I’m looking for those success stories we can create parallels to, and start to bring even more momentum in our organisation, but also to the industry.
I think for a CEO, that’s really important. I don’t just want to make my business great, want to leave a lasting legacy in the industry. That’s for those that stand after me and my leadership team in the future.
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