Fluffed NCOERs...NCO's with amazingly perfect NCOERs. Should the Army establish a better rating system?

SFC Private RallyPoint Member — Mon, 13 Jan 2014 12:59:20 -0500

During almost 2 years as Operations NCO I've seen hundreds of NCOERs, perfect NCOERs...immaculate, "X" exceeding standards on all blocks. But is any NCO a perfect NCO?

With that said, I've seen a lot of information on NCOERs that does not correlate with a NCOs achievement, and still get's processed, especially when the buddy system is involved. Why do leaders NCOs/Officer allow this? Have you experienced this?

Response by LTC Jason Bartlett made Jan 13 at 2014 1:20 PM

LTC Jason Bartlett — Mon, 13 Jan 2014 13:20:04 -0500

think they are in the process of doing that now.

Plans for a new Noncommissioned Officer Evaluation Report call for several
innovations that are sharply different from the current rating system, including
three different NCOERs, according to Sergeant Major of the Army Raymond
Chandler.

“There are some things we want to do with this report that we have never done
before,” Chandler said Aug. 7 in an exclusive interview with Army Times. “As
long as I have been in service, we either had an Enlisted Evaluation Report or
the NCOER, and they were reports where one size fits all in terms of not having
different versions for different ranks.

“With revisions that we want to put in place during the fall of next year
[2014], there will be three different NCOERs,” he said.

The NCO rating system will be aligned with leadership doctrine, similar to
pending changes to the Officer Evaluation Report, which launches in December.
The new NCOER will focus on three levels:

Tactical: At this level, the one report for sergeants and staff
sergeants will be designed to evaluate a soldier’s ability to do his or her job
and meet Army standards for performance.

“One of the things we have addressed in this report is counseling and
ensuring that it has been performed by the raters,” Chandler said. “In our
current form, we have four blocks that address counseling. In the new report,
that soldier will be required to validate that. The soldiers will do that with a
Common Access Card.”

Another significant feature of the tactical level report is that the senior
rater will have to conduct at least two counseling sessions during the rating
period. Senior raters normally are supervisors two ranks or two leadership
levels above the rated soldier and are responsible for assessing the promotion
potential of the rated soldier.

“These counseling sessions will be used to reinforce the potential portions
of the report that the senior rater is responsible for,” Chandler said.

Another feature of the new report is a clear delineation between performance,
a rater function, and potential, a senior rater function, Chandler said.

“The current report designates the senior rater to assess overall
performance, but we’ve taken that out and given it to the rater (normally a
soldier’s direct supervisor),” he said. “The senior rater will be strictly
focused on potential.”

Sergeants will be rated under the new system, as they are now, but their E-5
reports will be masked when they are considered for promotion to sergeant first
class, just as reports for lieutenants and junior warrant officers are masked
when the officers are boarded for major and chief warrant officer 3.

Organization: The second-grade plate under the new system will be used
to evaluate sergeants first class and master sergeants, leaders at the
organizational level.

“These evaluations will be similar to what we’re doing now, but we do believe
there may be enumeration for the senior rater, which is similar to the senior
rater section of the Officer Evaluation Report, and which limits the number of
people who can be given a top rating,” Chandler said.

The Army will continue to use the box checks of “excellence,” “success” and
“needs improvement,” but they will be aligned with the leader competencies and
attributes of Army Doctrine Reference Publication 6-22 (Leadership).

Chandler said the issue of enumeration will be looked at over the next year,
“and we’ll decide if [it should] be used with this group.”

Strategic: The third-grade plate of the new rating system will be
limited to sergeants major.

“This section will have enumeration, but the evaluations will be provided in
narrative rather than in bullet comments,” Chandler said. “It is taking on some
aspects of the old Enlisted Evaluation Report and the OER, and will focus on
leadership competencies at the strategic level and actions relating to
organizations, rather than some specific action at the tactical level.

“For example, a tank commander at the tactical level will be measured on how
well his crew does in qualification gunnery. That would be a measure of both
leadership and competence,” Chandler said.

“For the sergeant major, we are going to look at things like management
expectations for Army programs and [Sexual Harassment/Assault Response
Prevention] in terms of whether or not there has been a decrease in sexual
assaults and harassment in the organization during the rating period.”

Changes at the strategic level are being driven by comments from selection
board members who have reported they have a hard time assessing what the current
NCOER says about senior leaders.

Impact on professionalism

Chandler said the NCOER development team is following the work being done on
the new OER, especially in enumeration, “because this is fundamentally different
than what we have done with our NCOs in the past.

“This means that the brigade commander is going to have a profile to manage
for the six or seven battalion command sergeants major in his formation in terms
of identifying who is the best, who is average and who is not meeting the mark,”
he said. “We believe this will help the board identify those people who will
remain in the sergeant major program and go into the nominative program.”

Chandler said the new evaluation system will have a robust support form that
will help raters set clearly measurable standards at the tactical and
operational levels, and align standards with the leadership attributes and
competencies of ADRP 6-22.

“I think that throughout the force, we still have some work to do in
developmental counseling,” he said. “I think we have gotten a lot better at
counseling, and I think that has played into some of the things we have done
recently as concerns soldier separations for misconduct, unsatisfactory
performance and failure to meet standards for weight control.

“You have to have sustained, quality counseling to support those types of
actions,” Chandler said.

Response by CW2 Joseph Evans made Jan 13 at 2014 4:26 PM

CW2 Joseph Evans — Mon, 13 Jan 2014 16:26:06 -0500

Doesn't matter how you "fix" the system. If there is no integrity among the raters, no system is going to work.

Besides, the boards usually scrutinize members with those "too perfect to be true" evaluations a lot harder. If the writing style of the eval is essentially the same for 5 years running, something is fishy, especially if they walk on water the whole time.

Response by SFC Private RallyPoint Member made Mar 24 at 2014 6:06 PM

SFC Private RallyPoint Member — Mon, 24 Mar 2014 18:06:02 -0400

BLUF:

The system has been faulty for a while, and leaders want to see their Soldiers get promoted. I've learned from a few years in that no matter what screw, bolt, or nut that goes into the system that the machine still runs. The board members will review your packet for a few mins and assess a score and they get it pretty close with what comes from the MOI, as they have examples and practice scoring. People have learned the system and in a sense justify bullets, but if the senior rater nor reviewer say anything then it's going to go up. Typically the NCOER-1 (checklist) is not completed so the rater has nothing to build bullets from. The bullets should be bullet and revisited over a week or so then graded on the scale of excellent, success, needs improvement. This is just the way I've done it in the past, and pulling the senior rater away from things and getting their input, as this is a critical area for the board to look at.

The Army is going to a differnet system, once the Strategic level NCOER has time to mature and analysis is completed. I do believe it's going to rate peers on peers and address the need of the majority, but I work in a MSG slot now that is a strategic far forward level, and I'm sure the people on the board are asking "what hell does this guy do?", as people of the AMEDD typically only know TDA hospital and some type of units with guys that carry guns

Response by SFC Joe S. Davis Jr., MSM, DSL made Mar 24 at 2014 11:19 PM

SFC Joe S. Davis Jr., MSM, DSL — Mon, 24 Mar 2014 23:19:35 -0400

Roger that inflated NCOERS has messed the system up and in my opinion its a reflection of the NCO Corps I have been a NCO for 20 years and its about the good ole boy system when it comes to career progression sad to say. I retire this year so I hope the new NCOER fixes some of the crap that goes on at the DA Centralized promotion board. Quantity vs. Quality seems to be the case year after year.

Response by SGT Mark Sullivan made Feb 19 at 2015 10:40 AM

SGT Mark Sullivan — Thu, 19 Feb 2015 10:40:51 -0500

In the same regard, there are NCO's getting negative NCOER's because the rater doesn't like that particular subordinate NCO. I think NCOER's rating system does need a revamp, and removed from the hands of raters that are too close to the situation.