Useful

**REMENOOB** · 07-01-2012, 19:49

Just seen a thread over at armynet forums. People are now being boarded earlier than they should be. SSgt - WO2 listings show quite a number of early boarders. Must be a shortfall in the WO2 manning.

According to the REME promotion letter 2011-13 para 23 says that the top people must be given a chance to promote before more senior soldiers of the same trade if they are the best in their trade.

Seems a fair one to me.

How many times have we seen crusty useless tw*ts promoted just because they are more crusty?

This does not just apply to the SSgt -WO2 board. It first applied to the WO2 - WO1 board in December and will continue until the end of 2013 for all promotion boards.

What do you all think?

I love a good debate!

Ps. I am not one of those on that particular board. Although I`am a regular forum reader I have not posted in years and forgot my password etc etc. So post No1 from REMENOOB!

**Army_Rizzle** · 07-01-2012, 22:05

Heard this a while back, if there wasn't enough people who were eligible to make the grade, rather than dropping the standard they would start looking at people who wernt eligible but were above the quality line.

**REMENOOB** · 07-01-2012, 22:10

Originally Posted by Army_Rizzle

Heard this a while back, if there wasn't enough people who were eligible to make the grade, rather than dropping the standard they would start looking at people who wernt eligible but were above the quality line.

How do they know people are above the quality line before a board?????

**naked_mole_rat** · 08-01-2012, 00:00

I see it as back peddling of the greatest kind.

How many times in the past few years have we seen a new rule being introduced with regards promotion ie: CLM changes, extra time in rank, medical grading, time promotion etc. People have introduced these measures and not thought them through correctly. These decisions then have unforeseen consequences and REME ends up shooting its self in the foot. So how do they deal with the situation? With another knee jerk reaction rule change.

What has happened here is a breaking of their own rules by manning and records to cope with a situation that they either created or failed to predict. Yes some individuals have "dipped in" and good for them but how can the system be seen to be fair if they turn the process into such a lottery.

Another example of this is the results of the last ASCLB were a number of avionic techs were selected 6 months out of phase and to make matters worse some of them had annotations next to their names stating that they still required maths and science when the rules state that you shouldn't even be eligible for the board until you have completed both.

**REMENOOB** · 08-01-2012, 11:11

Interesting stuff. Back peddling sounds about right. Some lucky people will board early because of records mess ups.

Interesting ref the ASCLB selections

**okimato** · 08-01-2012, 12:29

Not sure its all records mess ups but back peddling it certainly is. The manning bods at HQ DEME(A) directed meddling with the promotion rules 2-3 years ago without a full understanding of the long term consequences. We are now reaping the benefits. Some relatively simple number crunching and modelling would have revealed that the changes made would cause problems.

It is relatively easy for REME Sldr Wg to assess in less than a minute whether an individual is above or below the quality line by reading his/her last few reports. It aint hard to achieve the quality line (6/10) but in most ranks and trades, dependent on the number of vacancies, you may need to be a long way above the quality line to get promoted. The key here is to identify those who will score very highly indeed, i.e. very well above the quality line. That itself is easy as consecutive "outstanding" well written reports full of superlatives stand out and there is therefore little risk in promoting early someone who will obviously come off a subsequent board.

Not sure the process is a lottery at APC level. Those who get the better reports promote! The main lottery is at unit level - you might get an OC/CO who knows you well, assesses you fairly on evidence and writes effective reports. The lottery is that you might be reported on by a knob who does not care, is biased against you for subjective and unfair reasons, or is crap at following the guidance on how to write effective reports.

**naked_mole_rat** · 08-01-2012, 13:25

Originally Posted by okimato

Not sure the process is a lottery at APC level. Those who get the better reports promote! The main lottery is at unit level - you might get an OC/CO who knows you well, assesses you fairly on evidence and writes effective reports. The lottery is that you might be reported on by a knob who does not care, is biased against you for subjective and unfair reasons, or is crap at following the guidance on how to write effective reports.

Oh I agree entirely. I meant it was a lottery as to whether you happened to be in the right time frame or stage of your career to benefit from whatever new rule is being applied at the time, such as is happening now. If you are in the right bracket now you could promote a year early but those a year behind you might have to wait until 2014 and do an extra year in rank, how can that be seen as fair.

Also I didn't mean to lay the blame entirely on APC but I would find it hard to believe if they weren't involved at some level, even if it is just the data they are producing upon which decisions are made. Did I just back peddle there?

**okimato** · 08-01-2012, 13:37

Roger all that!

**REMENOOB** · 14-01-2012, 22:10

Yes I agree that that it’s a bit of a lottery. It would seem that those not selected for early board would have a gripe and let’s be honest who wouldn’t.

Again I refer to the SSgt - WO2 board as an example. Roughly bar tiffies, there would be only 45 going to the board that were eligible. There are roughly another 30 as board early making 75. The promotion letter states that for early promotion there must be a manning need.

My question. Is there nearly 75 WO2 slots that need filling or is there going to be a lot of WO2's on the second trawl of redundancies which by chance is announced the same day as the promotion board starts????

Untill the 17th we will never know...........

**verticalgyro** · 15-01-2012, 00:11

Well, it's simply a product of what we all knew would happen when they moved the goalposts about time served. There would still be promotion slots opening up as people retired/moved up, and they're having to fill these with the people who would have been in the box under the old criteria. Nothing sinister about it as far as i can tell, just spectacular short-sightedness from Glasgow.

Some people will dip in. Not likely to be me either mate!

Actually - it has done something refreshing that I never expected to happen. There seems to be a lot more Artisans coming off SSgt>WO2 than before - is this just a coincidence or is this another by-product of fcuking about with time served. Will be interesting to see if this translates into the WO2>WO1 in a year/two years time.