The Air Force has spent the last three years designing and deploying its new, overhauled evaluation and promotion system for enlisted airmen.
This year, it gets its first full test.
The new enlisted evaluation system “really will go into full mode in FY 16,” Brig. Gen. Brian Kelly, director of military force management policy, said in a September interview. “Now it’s really time to execute those and put them in play.”
The final components — a system of quotas, or “forced distribution,” limiting how many airmen can get the top promotion recommendations and the accompanying points — began clicking into place in November, when technical sergeant enlisted performance reports closed out. Staff sergeants will be next to get quotas when their EPRs close out Jan. 31, and senior airmen will follow on March 31.
The forced distribution quotas are designed to kill the so-called “firewall 5” effect that left the old EPR system virtually useless at differentiating between airmen’s levels of performance. Under the old system, there were no limits on how many airmen could get the maximum five out of five points. And if everybody was getting a “firewall 5,” raters feared that giving their airmen even a 4 would doom their chances of promotion.
As a result, some 90 percent of airmen got the top 5 rating, and airmen across the service heavily criticized the out-of-control grade inflation.
But now, only the top 5 percent, at most, of senior airmen, staff sergeants and tech sergeants who are up for promotion to the next rank will be deemed “promote now” and get the full 250 EPR points. Up to 15 percent of senior airmen eligible for promotion to staff sergeant, and up to 10 percent of staff sergeants and tech sergeants up for promotion to tech and master sergeant, can receive a “must promote” recommendation and the accompanying 220 points.
The Air Force is also holding its second-ever promotion board to select master sergeants in April, similar to those held for E-8 and E-9 promotions.
And the Air Force will continue phasing out time-in-grade and time-in-service points this year. The three-year phase-out of longevity points began in 2015.
The Air Force previously put into place other components of the new enlisted evaluation system, such as a feedback form called the Airman Comprehensive Assessment, changes to EPR point values designed to emphasize performance, and consideration of fewer past EPRs to give more consideration to airmen’s recent performance.
