Australian Unity

Australian Unity is a 180-year old member-based organisation, established to look after the health and wellbeing of its members.

With a mission to help people thrive, Australian Unity offers a wide range of products and services that help improve quality of life. It operates aged care and residential facilities, invests in social infrastructure – including Specialist Disability Accommodation –, and provides investment products to help people achieve financial wellbeing and save for retirement.

Image of Australian Unity's Our ImpactGiven this breadth, the organisation sought to articulate and demonstrate how its diverse range of activities came together to create positive outcomes for its communities.

Throughout 2019–2022, SVA Consulting was engaged to support Australian Unity to define, measure and value its ‘community and social impact’ across the business.

Read the report.

The project (icon)
The project

We worked with Australian Unity to develop a framework to define, measure and value the community and social impact it creates in its diverse businesses.

The objective (icon)
The objective

Australian Unity sought to:

  • Develop a robust framework to describe how its diverse activities came together to create positive outcomes for its communities.
  • Use this framework to demonstrate and value the social impact on individuals and broader communities.

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The role we played

Working alongside Australian Unity, we:

  • Engaged with leadership teams across 14 business units and 90 products and services to understand their offerings and the impact they had on members, customers, employees and the broader community.
  • Developed and refined an organisation-wide ‘Community and Social Value (CSV) Framework’, which articulated a set of overarching outcomes based on input from across the business.

We then used the CSV framework to measure and value the total community and social value created by the business, placing a financial value against each outcome using a social value lens:

  • A set of principles were established to guide this work, informed by the Social Value principles and adapted to fit the unique needs of the organisation.
  • The measurement of total community and social value was conducted initially in FY21 and then refined in FY22 through a more in-depth review of outcomes and approaches to valuing those outcomes.

“The impact report allows us to clearly articulate what our role is in the communities we support, to use it to inform investment decisions and opens us up to multiple new and innovative opportunities. It will enable us to consider each decision through a community value lens and remain focused on the holistic impact of our portfolio.”

Rohan Mead
Group Managing Director, Australian Unity

Our impact (icon)
Project impact

Australian Unity’s first Our Impact report was published late 2021 and the updated FY22 Community and Social Value report will be published later this year.

Australian Unity received recognition for its work in July 2022 when it was awarded the Australian Financial Review’s specialist award, the ESG Metrics Innovator award for developing a social value impact measurement framework. In July 2023, it was recognised as one of the AFR’s Sustainability Leaders again.

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