New NCOER similar to the OER

SFC Richie; not sure about the backstabing, etc. I don't think so. It's pretty easy to identify those kinds of people in the officer community and that's usually accompanied with some other character flaws which result in a center of mass rating. The issue I have had with the NCOER is that we leave everything up to a board, with little to no meaningful impact from the raters or senior raters. It's based on specific words that can or can't be used and if you put this adjective here, it's equal to a "top block," unless everyone has that word, and then you need to use THIS wording, except on every second Tuesday. That's a pretty shaky way of doing business and we've been playing along for some time now. Finally, the rater and senior rater are going to be able to say, beyond a shadow of a doubt, which NCO's are truly better than their peers and deserve to be promoted and placed into positions of greater responsibility. As the NCO side of HRC begins to move in the direction it should have long ago, it's time for the rating system to catch up as well.

I felt that the current rating system of fully-capable/among the best was effective as it was. Each NCO was rated on their performance and how their leadership affected their Soldiers; not how one NCO compared to five others. It is true that under the current system, a rater could have five NCOs that they rated and two of them were stellar and received among the best ratings while the other three were just fully capable. I am not sure if this new system will promote "back-stabbing" or being thrown under the proverbial bus but it has the potential to.