What are your Pro's and Con's to the new AF promotion system?

For me, the pros are yet to be seen...as are the cons for that matter. One con that I see already though and one that bugs the life out of me is that instead of holding poor raters accountable, we changed the system to be one that made it harder for them to mess up. There were individuals out there that were using the old system appropriately and now that flexibility is out of their hands. If I am a rater in a DSD unit (MTI, MTL, PME, Tech Training, Thunderbirds, etc.) and I have a full unit of hand picked NCOs, all of which were competitively selected for their position, you are telling me that only 5% of those NCOs deserve the top rating? I don't buy it. You can't tell me they are the best of the best one day and then second class the next day. The thing I find funniest though is that the old system is the one that produced the very E-9s that decided it no longer worked. You telling me that Chief Cody didn't receive a promotion assist from his off-duty record? He made it purely on his job performance? This system will create the same heartburn that everyone before it has produced.

Too close to a repeat of history from the 60's before WAPS. Only test was a 00 question skill test. What they called the Whole Man System, I believe. During that time E1-E4 was 100%. After that promotion was based on the percentage of your AFSC to the base population. It was a very unfair system and a lot depended on how well your boss liked you. It was quite common to see guys getting ou as E-3's or approaching 20 as an E-4. Guys with college degrees getting out after 4 as two stripers. I won't bore you with minor details or horror stories, but its almost as if someone researched those days and tweaked it a bit to come up with this coming nightmare. Each new iteration was supposed to fix the old one. But, you can't fix people. Just an old farts take on things.

20 years service.... the last 5 years showed me that people who are book smart and can test good to get promoted, cant teach young people how to do the job, nor can they covert knowledge to the job....

The old system was wrong but I believe this one is too. Under the old system everyone inflated the EPRs to try and get their guys promoted. The good about the new system is that not everyone gets a firewall five. only a handful. The bad thing is that it is based on an allotted system. One unit may have three shining stars for the entire base and another unit have a bunch of seat warmers. The prior unit is not going to be allowed to give all three of those shining stars a top rating and the other unit is going to be able to give it to at least one of theirs maybe more depending on their pool of NCO's because it was allocated to them. Unless I missed the mark, it got taken out of the Superintendents and commanders hands of who they think needs to be pushed forward. I think the intent is there to make it better but no matter what you do, there will always be a way that seat warmers get through and some performers don't. In my mind, a step in the right direction, just needs some revectoring. I think it will help the system grow and adapt, hurt some unfortunate ones along the way, but it will at least do something to get eyes on a system, that in my mind has been broken for a while.

I personally think this is great, the old system was absolutely worthless. We had people who were grossly overweight, could not pass the PT test, and were generally not good at their jobs receiving 3s. A 3 was supposed to be given to your average Airman. Of course this was about 5 or so years ago and before they got much stricter about the PT test on EPRs. I don't think the AF was sending the right quality message. If you give people who are not 4 or 5s 4 or 5s then you are basically validating their behavior or bad habits and diminishing the actions of those who are truly deserving.

Of course I do understand the dilemma of there possibly being people who are truly 4s or 5s not getting the proper rating because of a forced ranking system, but let us be honest with ourselves, this will be the exception not the rule. However, I do think there should be a system that allows a supervisor to go through his chain of command and petition for a rating waiver if he or she truly believes their Airman deserves a better rating.

One big problem is the same we had involving officer evals back in the 70's and 80's. Only an x per cent can get the top ratings. That may work out ok in a line unit but personnel assigned to DSD units don't fit into those rating schemes. Just as SMS Eric Johnson Jr pointed out there are some units that have only the top personnel. I was in a unit my last six years where all candidates were personally interviewed and often we would pore over records and then invite someone in for an interview. We only took the best personnel and made very few mistakes in our hiring. Those people all deserved promotions and the top evals.

Anything has to be better than the old system.

Don't know anything about it.....but hopefully it's improved.

Well if your in the BAND you have it made.

I think it makes sense. You can mark someone's performance and give a promotion recommendation separately. If someone a great performer but isn't top 15% that'll be documented. The rating didn't matter to the board before because everyone had the same score. Now even if forced there is some differentiation.