Why Voconiq exists
Voconiq was created to address a challenge that sits at the intersection of organizations, communities and decision making.
A global problem for social risk
Around the world, companies, governments and institutions make decisions that shape people’s lives, often without fully understanding the communities affected by those decisions. At the same time, communities often feel they have no meaningful way to be heard. We founded Voconiq to help bridge that gap, using science to help organizations understand communities and make better decisions.
The research origins at CSIRO
Where Voconiq Started
Our work began as a research program within Australia's national scientific research organization, focused on understanding social license to operate. This refers to the level of trust and acceptance communities have toward organizations operating around them. For many years, social license was discussed as a concept but rarely measured in a rigorous way. Over more than a decade, our research at the national scientific research organization focused on understanding the drivers of trust and acceptance. This long term research led to the development of a scientific framework to rigorously measure not just how communities felt, but why they felt that way.
We began applying this research in industry, particularly in sectors operating in complex environments where relationships with communities were critical to long term success. Organizations knew social risk was real, but they struggled to measure it, manage it or explain it internally. Our research provided something new: an evidence based way to understand how organizations are experienced by the communities around them and what drives trust.
Why We Became a Company
As the work grew, it became clear that our research could have a much larger impact outside CSIRO. Creating Voconiq allowed us to take the science out of individual projects and apply it at scale, building long-term datasets with organizations over many years and across multiple regions.
We started Voconiq because we believed our scientific method could help organizations make better decisions, reduce conflict and bring the community voice into decision making if it was applied consistently and over time.
What We Do Today
Today, we help organizations better understand their relationships with the communities around them and what drives trust and acceptance. This insight helps organizations identify social risks early, prioritize actions that matter most to communities and track whether their actions are improving relationships.
Over time, the data often becomes a mirror. It shows organizations how their decisions and actions are experienced by others. This can be confronting, but it can also be transformative. When organizations see themselves through the eyes of the communities around them, it often changes how decisions are made, how communication is handled and how relationships are managed.
Why this work matters
Decisions that affect communities are made every day, in boardrooms, government offices and project sites around the world. Voconiq measures social understanding so the community voice can be in the room when decisions are made.
