thedrifter
09-17-07, 02:51 PM
Bonus points
Corps offers select Marines 60 promotion points as retention incentive
By John Hoellwarth - jhoellwarth@militarytimes.com
Posted : September 24, 2007
The Corps doesn’t just want first-term re-enlistments, it needs them. Badly.
With retention goals for fiscal 2008 projected to surpass the inflated quotas Corps planners were saddled with at the start of this year, a new incentive announced Sept. 10 offers extra promotion points to first-termers who decide to stay Marine, according to MarAdmin message 529/07.
Every lance corporal and corporal with an active-duty contract expiring between Oct. 1 and Sept. 30, 2008, will automatically receive 60 composite score points toward promotion if they sign up to do four more years in uniform, according to the message. Those 60 points equal about nine months’ time in grade and time in service, meaning that a Marine, after raising his right hand, can expect to be promoted faster.
The policy does not apply to reservists.
Marines eligible for re-enlistment — historically prevented from signing a contract until the first day of their last fiscal year on active duty — have been authorized to re-enlist since June 24, after the Corps announced retention policy changes that also set flat-rate Selective Re-enlistment Bonuses of up to $48,000 for first-termers.
Under the policy change, the roughly 1,400 Marines who signed their fiscal 2008 re-enlistment contracts early will receive the bonus points too, according to the message.
The change is yet another part of the Corps’ drive to retain as many Marines as possible, after Pentagon officials announced plans to add 22,000 Marines to the Corps’ end strength through fiscal 2011, for a total of 202,000.
“This change is intended to provide another incentive to help meet the target goals for re-enlistment,” Maj. Ryan Reilly, head of the Corps’ enlisted promotions section, wrote in an e-mail response to questions. “It is believed that these additional points could encourage [lance corporals and corporals] to re-enlist because they would have a higher composite score and correspondingly a higher likelihood of promotion.”
Whether an eligible Marine re-enlists in the near future or has already, he won’t actually feel the benefits of his 60 extra points until January at the earliest, because the cut-off date for information used to compute composite scores for those eligible for promotion in October, November and December was Aug. 20, according to the message.
It remains unclear what effect the bonus points will have on promotions for Marines not yet eligible to re-enlist, since two Marines in the same job specialty could be competing for promotion, yet one is 60 points ahead simply because it was his time to re-enlist. But clearly, Marines on their second contract will be more competitive than those who aren’t.
For Corps planners, setting the incentive at 60 points was a balancing act between enticing Marines to re-enlist and ensuring that promotions for those not yet eligible remained within reach.
Reilly said the original recommendation was to award 100 to 200 points, though decision-makers ultimately found that “to be too high.”
“It was determined that awarding 50 points would be a good incentive, but still permit a Marine who is already highly competitive for promotion ... without the additional 50 re-enlistment points on the composite score to remain competitive against the average Marine who does re-enlist.”
That 50 points in principle became 60 points in practice because the Marine Corps Total Force System software used Corps-wide for personnel administration “does not currently have the ability to add ‘composite score re-enlistment points,’” Reilly said.
As a result, the Corps’ Manpower Information Division offered the “interim solution” of allowing commanders to grant 60 points for re-enlistment under the “command recruiting bonus points,” which MCTFS is already set up to input, Reilly said.
Though the Corps’ administrative software will eventually be upgraded to include a composite score re-enlistment bonus specifically, “a fully functional implementation in MCTFS is not feasible” until fiscal 2009 starts on Oct. 1, 2008, Reilly said.
When that happens, the bonus points, which will remain “permanent until otherwise rescinded,” are intended to stay fixed at 60 “to maintain fairness,” he said.
Reilly said the Corps’ active component is aiming to retain “approximately 9,500 Marines” slated to drop into the Reserve next fiscal year. That’s around 1,200 more than the 8,298 re-enlistments retention officials are on the hook to deliver by the time fiscal 2007 ends on Sept. 30 and more than 3,400 over the original 2007 quota set before the end strength increase was announced.
Ellie
Corps offers select Marines 60 promotion points as retention incentive
By John Hoellwarth - jhoellwarth@militarytimes.com
Posted : September 24, 2007
The Corps doesn’t just want first-term re-enlistments, it needs them. Badly.
With retention goals for fiscal 2008 projected to surpass the inflated quotas Corps planners were saddled with at the start of this year, a new incentive announced Sept. 10 offers extra promotion points to first-termers who decide to stay Marine, according to MarAdmin message 529/07.
Every lance corporal and corporal with an active-duty contract expiring between Oct. 1 and Sept. 30, 2008, will automatically receive 60 composite score points toward promotion if they sign up to do four more years in uniform, according to the message. Those 60 points equal about nine months’ time in grade and time in service, meaning that a Marine, after raising his right hand, can expect to be promoted faster.
The policy does not apply to reservists.
Marines eligible for re-enlistment — historically prevented from signing a contract until the first day of their last fiscal year on active duty — have been authorized to re-enlist since June 24, after the Corps announced retention policy changes that also set flat-rate Selective Re-enlistment Bonuses of up to $48,000 for first-termers.
Under the policy change, the roughly 1,400 Marines who signed their fiscal 2008 re-enlistment contracts early will receive the bonus points too, according to the message.
The change is yet another part of the Corps’ drive to retain as many Marines as possible, after Pentagon officials announced plans to add 22,000 Marines to the Corps’ end strength through fiscal 2011, for a total of 202,000.
“This change is intended to provide another incentive to help meet the target goals for re-enlistment,” Maj. Ryan Reilly, head of the Corps’ enlisted promotions section, wrote in an e-mail response to questions. “It is believed that these additional points could encourage [lance corporals and corporals] to re-enlist because they would have a higher composite score and correspondingly a higher likelihood of promotion.”
Whether an eligible Marine re-enlists in the near future or has already, he won’t actually feel the benefits of his 60 extra points until January at the earliest, because the cut-off date for information used to compute composite scores for those eligible for promotion in October, November and December was Aug. 20, according to the message.
It remains unclear what effect the bonus points will have on promotions for Marines not yet eligible to re-enlist, since two Marines in the same job specialty could be competing for promotion, yet one is 60 points ahead simply because it was his time to re-enlist. But clearly, Marines on their second contract will be more competitive than those who aren’t.
For Corps planners, setting the incentive at 60 points was a balancing act between enticing Marines to re-enlist and ensuring that promotions for those not yet eligible remained within reach.
Reilly said the original recommendation was to award 100 to 200 points, though decision-makers ultimately found that “to be too high.”
“It was determined that awarding 50 points would be a good incentive, but still permit a Marine who is already highly competitive for promotion ... without the additional 50 re-enlistment points on the composite score to remain competitive against the average Marine who does re-enlist.”
That 50 points in principle became 60 points in practice because the Marine Corps Total Force System software used Corps-wide for personnel administration “does not currently have the ability to add ‘composite score re-enlistment points,’” Reilly said.
As a result, the Corps’ Manpower Information Division offered the “interim solution” of allowing commanders to grant 60 points for re-enlistment under the “command recruiting bonus points,” which MCTFS is already set up to input, Reilly said.
Though the Corps’ administrative software will eventually be upgraded to include a composite score re-enlistment bonus specifically, “a fully functional implementation in MCTFS is not feasible” until fiscal 2009 starts on Oct. 1, 2008, Reilly said.
When that happens, the bonus points, which will remain “permanent until otherwise rescinded,” are intended to stay fixed at 60 “to maintain fairness,” he said.
Reilly said the Corps’ active component is aiming to retain “approximately 9,500 Marines” slated to drop into the Reserve next fiscal year. That’s around 1,200 more than the 8,298 re-enlistments retention officials are on the hook to deliver by the time fiscal 2007 ends on Sept. 30 and more than 3,400 over the original 2007 quota set before the end strength increase was announced.
Ellie