Living Employee Memory: Continuity Note

1. Open a note only for a future work question

Start with the next conversation or review that the note should support. If there is no defined work question, do not create a continuity item merely because a conversation occurred.

• Purpose: the work question, action or open point that needs a later check.
• Scope: relevant campaign, work period, role or work moment.
• Source: the permitted conversation, approved record or human decision, with its date.
• Audience: which authorised people may use the note for this stated purpose.
• Review trigger: next campaign, agreed work event, date or correction request.

2. Copy this dated continuity-note template

Keep the statement, the context and the follow-up separate so a later reader does not mistake a provisional account for a settled finding. Use an approved document or system for this original worksheet; it does not imply that an external note is automatically imported into Lontra.

• What was stated or agreed: use a short, neutral description and identify whose account it is.
• Work context: task, timing, relevant condition and known limit of the account.
• Action or question: what should happen next, or what still needs checking.
• Human owner: person responsible for the next conversation, process check or correction.
• Status: stated, checked, corrected, superseded, closed or still open, with date.
• Correction route: how the person or responsible owner can add context or dispute the note.

3. Revisit before relying on the note

At the next conversation, show the relevant item in context and ask what changed. Check whether the planned action occurred, whether the work conditions were comparable and whether the person wants to correct the earlier account. Record the new account beside the old one rather than rewriting the history to make it look consistent.

• What is still accurate, and what has changed since the dated note?
• Did the promised support or work opportunity occur?
• What evidence, explanation or perspective is still missing?
• Should the item continue, be corrected, be superseded or be closed, and why?

4. Use continuity to ask a better next question

Permitted, dated context can help an authorised user scope the next campaign or ask a focused question about a known work moment. Ask Lontra can explore accessible campaign context and memory in natural language, but a synthesis depends on the material, period and permissions available. Check any synthesis against the underlying context and bring the interpretation to the responsible human discussion.

• Name the decision, population and period before asking a question.
• Keep a missing perspective or counterexample visible in the next review.
• Use a manager brief to prepare action, then clarify context through an authorised discussion with the people concerned.
• Close or supersede items that no longer serve the defined work question.

Why this guide is useful

Use this original template between two focused conversations about the same work question. It is not an organisational-memory platform evaluation: that separate resource tests how a team maintains shared knowledge. This page concerns a small, permissioned thread of employee context that needs to be revisited, corrected or closed with the people involved.

Keep only context that the next conversation needs

A continuity note is not a transcript, a performance score or a case file. Keep the scope narrow: one work question, a stated item, the permitted audience and the next review. Do not turn a missing update into a negative inference, merge a person’s account with an unverified explanation, or copy the note into a system that is not approved for that purpose.

Concrete example

Fictional example: during an onboarding conversation, an adviser says that the late-shift handover is unclear and agrees to try the current checklist on the next suitable handover. The continuity note records the date, the work moment, the adviser’s stated concern, the checklist version and the manager’s commitment to arrange a practice opportunity. It does not state that the adviser lacks a skill or that the checklist caused the issue. At the next campaign, the adviser can say that the opportunity never occurred or that the checklist needs correction. The manager receives an action-oriented brief and the responsible people decide whether to revise, continue or close the action.

Sources

• Lontra product: Living Memory
• Lontra product: Ask Lontra