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It’s up to commanders

In response to opinions from Sgt. 1st Class Michael Spellman and Command Sgt. Maj. Ralph E. Veppert on the Army’s new Automatic List Integration policy for staff sergeant promotions, their concerns are the reason this policy was designed and implemented.

The Army promotion regulation requires counseling for every soldier in the primary zone who is initially not recommended for promotion. The new Automatic List Integration policy, or ALI, backs that up by bringing soldiers’ requirements for professional development counseling to the attention of unit-level leaders. The Army is sending a message that, at a certain point in time, there is an expectation that a soldier will be trained sufficiently to have developed the potential for assuming responsibilities at the next rank. It’s a philosophy already residing through all ranks.

The Army already automatically considers soldiers for promotion to sergeant first class, master sergeant and sergeant major when they attain time in service and time in grade.

The semi-centralized promotion system consists of two parts: recommendation at the unit level and selection at the Army level. On average, unit leaders recommend approximately 4 percent of fully qualified, active-component sergeants for promotion to staff sergeant in any given month. Since the process at the unit level is based on recommending soldiers for promotion when they show potential for the next rank, then the data might suggest that about 96 percent of our fully eligible sergeants do not display the potential and are neither trained in or ready for the next level of responsibility. These are the same sergeants readily recognized as combat-proven veterans engaged in two separate operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The primary function of our promotion system is to select the best-qualified soldiers for promotion to the next rank to satisfy position requirements. As the Army looks to change its force structure and subsequently increase the need for NCOs, promotion demands will increase slightly. When combat-proven soldiers are not recommended for promotion at the unit level, the Army finds it challenging to provide commanders the right mix of rank and skill sets to man their organizations. This ultimately results in position vacancies. When that occurs, soldiers holding a lesser rank (generally, the same ones not recommended in the first place) step up and fill the voids. This means that for every staff sergeant shortage, somewhere out there a sergeant is already doing a staff sergeant’s job.

It is imperative that company-level leaders counsel, train and develop soldiers for the future with the responsibility to recommend those soldiers for promotion to the rank of staff sergeant and sergeant. The Army’s expectation is that this will support recommendations for promotion at the point when soldiers become fully eligible without waiver.

The ALI policy actually applies to soldiers who are one year past the point of attaining full eligibility yet are still not recommended for promotion.

There are no reductions in standards. Army standards are clearly established within the regulation. What we find, however, are those “additional” standards established at subordinate levels that go something like this: “Too new to the unit — need to wait so we can evaluate him or her a little longer;” “if they don’t win the soldier or NCO of the month competition, they won’t go to the board in this outfit;” or “you must do the 4-mile run in 32 minutes or you will not go to the board.”

These unit-established restrictions are not authorized and do not facilitate the intent and purpose of our selection process. Unit leaders need to train and develop soldiers to assume the duties at the next rank — not establish subjective and arbitrary measures of success that are not applied equally across the Army.

Commanders are still in charge and ultimately maintain the final say regarding who is or is not on the promotion list. If they decide no, then a soldier should not be on the list.

But commanders also have the responsibility to counsel the soldier quarterly until that soldier shows the potential for promotion, or leaves the Army. We remain convinced a majority of soldiers will respond to counseling and professional development plans.

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The writer is chief of the enlisted promotions branch at Human Resources Command.