IBNs?

Email everyone and let them read it or not. It has worked in the places I have worked, you look at it read and save it or delete it. Expecting people to look elsewhere unless they are really interested, doesn’t work. Trying to make this the only option and the same questions will come up when discussing things, “have you seen …?.” “no, where is it?” “on sharepoint” “oh”, put it out as an attachment people more likely to at least look at it. At school we get a weekly bulletin, people scan it for anything relevant to them and things in it are mentioned and talked about, where I used to work a UK workforce of around 18000 and email was king for disseminating info and not in a cascading style. As ever delete is the way to go.

No. Put it as a link to a Document Repository System (ooh look, funnily enough we have one: it’s called Sharepoint!) in an email

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This is more to do with the number of forms and documents we have in the ATC and the number of people needing to prove they exist, so do mindless, silly things in an ad hoc manner to justify they exist.
Compare this to the average workplace people look at a form or document and think still does the job we need 10 years later. People are too busy at work to worry about changing / inventing forms and documents, In the ATC we’ve had this form or document for 3 weeks (slight exaggeration) need to change it for no reason than we have to change it.

So we are now at week 25 of 2021 and have just had the 21st IBN of the year issued, are they being over used?

2021 IBNs

  1. CCF (RAF) Reporting Safeguarding Concerns - Safeguarding Notification Form and Flow Chart
  2. RAFAC Updated Air Cadet Publications (ACP) 18 AND 26
  3. Notifiable Occurrences – Reporting the Death of CFAV, Cadets and Civilian Committee Members
  4. Update to RAFAC Investigation Procedures
  5. Security Vetting – Notifying HQ RAFAC Personnel Department of Details
  6. Update to the Wing Child Protection Advisers (WCPA) Terms of Reference (TOR)
  7. Name change for the Commandant’s Air Cadet Warrant Officer (CACWO)
  8. Regional Safety Health Check
  9. RAFAC Functional Safety Steering Group (FSSG)
  10. Safeguarding Guide for Parents/Carers
  11. Name change for the Adult Training Facility (ATF)
  12. Update on Aerospace Training
  13. National Reissue of RAFAC Form 3822A – RAF Air Cadets Consent Certificate and issue of new RAFAC Form 3822H – RAF Air Cadets Cadet Health Declaration Form
  14. Direction and Guidance For Units on Mandated First Aid Kit For Use on Ranges.
  15. Electronic on-boarding of new Civilian Instructors, Civilian Gliding Instructors and Chaplains
  16. Renewal of Cadet Force Adult Volunteer Security Advice Brief
  17. Rapid Stocktake of Cadet Weapons and Category 1 Items Attractive to Criminal and Terrorist Organisations
  18. RAFAC Training Academy (RAFAC TA) course delivery
  19. Appointment of Senior Volunteer Advisor
  20. Issue of Officer’s No1 Uniform for Officers Attending their Officers Initial Course
  21. Reporting of Adult Casework
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I can fully see the point you are raising here.

None of those listed are time critical (except perhaps 17 but that is a lack of forethought being applied) and could easily wait until the end of the month as part of a combined document – they could even be incorporated into something logical like CRO which highlight changes to policy/procedures/name of the CACWO

That said is it easier to read 8 over two months rather than 5 at the end of every month?

Ie, from an admin burden point of view is it easier to skim ready ~one a week to determine how relevant it is, than find effort to deal with 5 in one go?

I guess it depends how much appetite people may have for little and often or predictable patterns accepting it could be a lot or not.
to determine how relevant it is, than find effort to deal with 5 in one go?

I guess it depends how much appetite people may have for little and often or predictable patterns accepting it could be a lot or not.

Perhaps some SENSIBLE ad RELEVANT monthly Corps Routine Orders would be a better place!
Only 12 things a year to read. Not 40 ish.

? Dunno.
I get on fine with ibns but if people are struggling maybe that’s a better way?

Sort of a centralised, sensible, relevant, monthly Corps ‘digest’.

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Beat me to it.
Great minds and all that…

I much prefer having the list of IBN’s since I can pick and choose which ones I pay attention too by skim reading the title. Plus when I then need to refer back to something I can skim read the titles again rather than thinking “which CRO was it in?”

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Do both.
Release the individual ibns for those of us who can cope.

For those who need spoon feeding info in an easier method. Bang them in CROs.

Frankly if it’s important enough to be an ibn, its important enough to go in CROs too.

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I personally don’t think they are over used at all. They (should be) are an effective way of disseminating information to CFAVs and perms.

I think some kind of monthly update list could also be effective. But if you go down that route then there needs to be something in place for time sensitive updates too!

Personally, I prefer the IBN as-and-when approach to the old system of ‘dump everything from this month into routine orders’.

It’s basically the same reason I prefer to receive individual emails over the ‘digest’ which some others call for.
I can easily ignore the IBNs which have no relevance to me and when I want to look something up again, hunting for a particular IBN is easier than trying to recall which month’s ROs I read it in and then reading through the whole thing to find it.

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I agree with this view.

Especially when you factor in the alerts functionality in Sharepoint mentioned earlier (allowing a weekly notification of any new IBNs) and the number of repeats that routine orders tend to contain, IBNs seem to me, to be a fairly elegant solution.

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