Current Awareness: Here, "current awareness" refers to the act of ensuring one becomes aware of appropriate topical and industry events, publications, legislation, news, debate, and so on in a timely manner so as to react to them or otherwise incorporate them into one's work.
If they do it themselves, how well - and through what means - do knowledge workers ensure they stay abreast of relevant developments in their field - without getting inundated by and wasting time on irrelevant or duplicated information? If it's done for them, how successful is the program?
3a. Employees are keenly aware of the need to stay abreast of developments and put effort into maintaining a personal lineup of sources to monitor and/or news "feeds" to receive.
3b. The culture supports free subscriptions to many web based newsletters, blogs, and the like - and the time to review the incoming notifications is regarded as a necessary part of staying sharp.
3c. The information centre or a similar entity offers a customized service to establish, manage, and periodically review a set of current awareness sources - including ones that aren't free.
3d. The information centre, the communications group, or a similar entity monitors the media and posts a daily intranet collection of items of general interest to everyone ("what you need to hear about today").
3e. Employees sometimes comment how they are uncertain they 'get it all' and feel uncomfortable when they are caught unaware of a relevant development.
3f. Employees indicate their current awareness mechanism is irregular, deriving in some cases from conversations with colleagues.
3g. Some say that although they do not subscribe to many sources, they still feel they catch the important items.
3h. Employees find it time consuming to look at their burgeoning inboxes and end up deleting many notifications unread.
3i. Personal preferences vary from "I want it all to come in email (or I'll never find the time to look)" to "I'd prefer a central news forum where I can go browse if I have the time (and yes, I may rarely find the time)" - so any organizational effort to support current awareness must necessarily cater accordingly.
Next in the series: Email
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