Good evening everyone!
For the past few months myself (staff cadet sergeant) and the staff have been giving interviews and testing 4 cadets who have applied for promotion to corporal. The letters were written out and I was told of the cadets who would be promoted.
However, on the parade night the OC had stepped down and our squadron adjutant took over as the new OC; because she was technically the new OC she can’t promote those cadets who had already been planned to be promoted. Even though she has been with our squadron for almost 5 years, she can’t promote due to some regulations from the wing HQ.
I wanted to ask on here what the exact period of time is until she can promote them as the cadets have waited almost a year since their initial application and I feel horrible keeping them on edge like this.
On day 1, as far as HQ policy is concerned. If they are now the OC, then they can promote as they please up to FS. If your Wing has a silly local policy, then that might be different.
Well, technically the RC is meant to formally approve someone becoming OC, so maybe they are waiting on that step? But normally once they’ve been given the Bader account and everyone is calling them OC externally and internally, that should be good enough.
It may be they’ve been told just to hold the fort for now, and not make any dramatic changes, such as promotions. But if the cadets had already been through the whole process, and it was already agreed who was going to get promoted, then that should really go through still.
This annoys me. At the end of the day, if cadets have worked hard to gain promotion, why do they have to wait for changes in the staff department when the adj has been there and knows how to run the show?
Cadets have a handful of years before they age out, gain employment, or pursue further education. While they are keen and ready to go, just promote them. Staff can wait months as we are often already Stockholm syndrome’d into the organisation although some staff do manage to escape.
I don’t understand. Pretty sure it doesn’t require the OC Bader account to action a promotion, and there’s no external reporting or audit of promotion decisions…
They can take a long walk off a short pier. It’s empire building that shows they are far too walty and completely unsuitable to be involved in running a youth organisation
The main thing here, is dependent on the Wing’s OC appointment policy. The current OC has gone, at the moment the adj is the senior officer/SNCO there but it doesn’t make her (in this case) the OC. Some Wings will advertise the post of OC across the Wing inviting applicants to apply, they will then post into OC according to that recruitment process. It could also be the case she is happy with being adj but doesn’t want the role of OC too. Or it might be in that Wing’s case that she is waiting on the formalities.
When a formal appointment has been made, the new OC will make his or her decisions on promotions. A new OC might be put in post and decide he/she wants more or less Cpl’s or might decide that they want to get to know the candidates at least by informal interview or read the letters before they go with previous recommendations.
Each OC handles promotions slightly different, if I was taking over the reigns so to speak, I would want to know the background of the recommendations before acting and also I would want to review the NCO team as a whole to understand if we need to fill any gaps.
Arguably the promotions have already been signed off by the outgoing OC before they left (considering the letters were written and name known to some people), the decision just hasn’t been communicated to the cadets. The Adj could just hand them the rank slides and confirm the decision already made.
Our squadron is in Essex Wing of Central and East Region. I’ve seen a lot of promotion issues in my sector alone so I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a policy from Wing, I just can’t find the document on SharePoint.
It may be that there is a lot going on in the background, which means no formal, or even informal appointment has actually been made.
I do however fully agree with @Farmerdan that if this was already a decision that had been made, then the adj, even as adj and not OC, should be able to carry out that decision.
