The Air Force on Monday announced two refinements to the new enlisted promotion system, which seeks to ensure that airmen in the same rank are evaluated at the same time.
First, aAll enlisted airmen who have been selected for promotion — but who have not yet sewed on their new rank — will now close out their performance reports along with everybody else in their soon-to-be higher rank, the Air Force Personnel Center said Monday.
The new policy means, for example, that a technical sergeant who has been selected for promotion to master sergeant — but who has not yet officially been promoted — will get his enlisted performance report on the master sergeant closeout date of Sept. 30, not the tech sergeant closeout date of Nov. 30.
Before 2015, all enlisted airmen were previously evaluated throughout the year. But as part of a major overhaul of how the Air Force evaluates and promotes enlisted airmen, the service is switching to a system of static closeout dates for EPRs, coinciding with the promotion eligibility cutoff date. The new system seeks to ensure that airmen in the same rank will be evaluated at the same time.
Second,But for 1,374 staff sergeants who were promoted between Feb. 1 and March 31 and 1,086 tech sergeants promoted between Dec. 1, 2014, and Jan. 31, the new system would have meant some would have gone nearly two years without a performance report. So for those 2,460 airmen, the Air Force this year has set up a one-time EPR closeout date of April 30.
"We received feedback from the field that there were many tech and staff sergeant-selects who did not receive an EPR based on timing of their promotion and [static closeout] dates," AFPC operations division chief Col. Joe Atkins said in the release. "The Air Force established a one-time EPR [static closeout date] so these impacted airmen who sewed on during those four months would not go almost 23 months without a performance report."
For all other airmen, staff sergeant closeout dates are now Jan. 31 and tech sergeant closeout dates are Nov. 30.
Senior airmen and below have a closeout date of March 31, chief master sergeants have a May 31 closeout date, senior master sergeants have a July 31 closeout date, and master sergeants have a Sept. 30 closeout date.
The Air Force said it has notified the newly-promoted staff and tech sergeants who will be affected by the one-time April 30 closeout date.
Stephen Losey is the air warfare reporter for Defense News. He previously covered leadership and personnel issues at Air Force Times, and the Pentagon, special operations and air warfare at Military.com. He has traveled to the Middle East to cover U.S. Air Force operations.
