Awards Committee

[cobra6987]

So, I recently became the Wing Personnel officer and were starting to spin up our awards committee. I was briefed by the outgoing how the process has been completed in the past. I feel like there has got to be an easier, and less confusing, way to do it. Basically it is set up like this:

I collect the awards (Online application or hard copy if wing award)
I sort the awards by type of award
I email those packets to the committee (So about 26 emails each with the nominations for each award)
They fill out a ranking form and send it back to me
I compile the forms into one master one with each rating
We convene again and discuss the results, make final recommendations
Send our results to the CC for approvals

Although it sounds pretty straight forward, I have a concern of cumbersome this could potentially be, especially with 26 different emails being sent to the committee members.

I would like to know what your experience has been with a group or wing committee and what your process or workflow was like. I feel like there has got to be a better way.

Thanks for any input.

[lordmonar]

Are you talking like "of the year" awards.....or medals a decorations?

If you are talking "of the year" type awards....that sounds like a fairly good system.....with the caveat of why do you have so many people on the committee?

Awards boards in the USAF for everything from squadron up to MAJCOM rarely have more then five people on them....usually just three.  26 seems to be over kill.

YMMV

[cobra6987]

Yes, I am talking about the year of awards. And I should clarify, it's not 26 members on the board, it's 26 different email, one for each award with the candidates in that email.

[kwe1009]

Sounds like a good plan to me.  Make sure your board for the Cadet of the Year complies with CAPR 39-3.  There are very specific membership requirements for that board.

[NIN]

A distribution list is helpful.

Sent from my SM-G920V using Tapatalk

[Eclipse]

Is there any necessity to make the votes confidential?

If not, a single shared spreadsheet could save yo a ton of emails.

You could either have all the committee members edit the same worksheet, or each could have their own with their order of precedence.

Store the narratives in a dingle shared folder that grants only view rights to the committee members and you only need to send one email.

Or you could set up a Google Form with the choices, set it so only one submission per member, and that will populate a single spreadsheet,
and even notify you when a submission is received (if you want).

In the case of a form, voting is confidential to anyone who has access to the spreadsheet (not the submission form).

Once you're done you can turn off the form, and keep the sheet for history.

[cobra6987]

Is there any necessity to make the votes confidential?

Not that I'm aware of, right now I'm just copying what my predecessor did.

Sounds like a good plan to me.  Make sure your board for the Cadet of the Year complies with CAPR 39-3.  There are very specific membership requirements for that board.

We have the 7 person and 2 female requirement. We don't see why the region CAP-USAF Asst Director of Ops needs to be involved for a wing cadet award so we're not going to venture that route. Glad they gave us flexibility with a SHOULD instead of a WILL statement.

[kwe1009]

Is there any necessity to make the votes confidential?

For boards that meet remotely I like the idea of secret ballot because it allows each member to make a decision without just going with what someone else voted (I provide the final votes to all board members so there is transparency).  If the board is meeting either via telcon or in person I would go with the public vote because in those situations there should be discussion about the package prior to a vote.  That is just a preference of mine after being part of too many boards where members didn't even read the packages and just voted with the majority.

[Eclipse]

This isn't directed at anyone in this thread, only a general comment.

Wings waste sooooooo much time on these "of the nominated" awards no one cares about.

Everyone would be much better off if there were objective standards (maybe with a final "her vs. him" at the end) then this
idea that those who know there's an award get an award, while those doing the real work of CAP don't care.

That's not to say that many or the recipients don't deserve recognition, but I've seen a lot of shake and takes by
people who ran unopposed.

[kwe1009]

This isn't directed at anyone in this thread, only a general comment.

Wings waste sooooooo much time on these "of the nominated" awards no one cares about.

Everyone would be much better off if there were objective standards (maybe with a final "her vs. him" at the end) then this
idea that those who know there's an award get an award, while those doing the real work of CAP don't care.

That's not to say that many or the recipients don't deserve recognition, but I've seen a lot of shake and takes by
people who ran unopposed.

Very true.  Last year in my Wing only a little over half of the awards had more than 1 nomination.  At the same time, just because there was only one nominee didn't mean that the individual won be default.  In some cases we didn't select anyone.

[cobra6987]

That's not to say that many or the recipients don't deserve recognition, but I've seen a lot of shake and takes by
people who ran unopposed.

That is very unfortunate and I hate to see it too. We are pushing information about the awards wing wide and making resources available to help with how narratives are written. We sent two emails to all Seniors, Cadets, and parents with award information. We included awards criteria and some highlights from "Awards Made Easy" (CAPP 39-3). We have a face to face commanders call tomorrow and were also going to hand out flyers with basic awards info and due dates on it. We're also going to have sample narratives available to help show people how awards need to be written.

It's been about a week since the emails went out and I've received two nominations. I suspect the trend of waiting until last minute is going to continue, but I just hope we get more possible nominations.

Random thought: My predecessor did a very good job of maintaining everything that came in from previous year awards. Maybe I'll go though the past few years and see how many nominations are coming out of squadrons and for those with none, find out why. Not to try to force them to submit awards, but just to see if there's an issue that we could help with.

[CAP_truth]

As my wing's DP, I handle about 30 to 50 award packages per year. This year we held hard copies for all OTY awards. Once all was received they were sent to board members. A conference call was held to vote. After choices were made the award nominees were entered into e-services and sent to wing command for approval, and forward to region.

[Eclipse]

Random thought: My predecessor did a very good job of maintaining everything that came in from previous year awards. Maybe I'll go though the past few years and see how many nominations are coming out of squadrons and for those with none, find out why. Not to try to force them to submit awards, but just to see if there's an issue that we could help with.

I suspect it will be a number of reasons but variations on the the same themes..

A: No one in the squadron is performing above minimums for "x" (just as an example, it's going to be pretty hard for
the average Unit Comm officer to compare with a Group or Wing officer unless there some unusual situation or
they are BOTH a unit and higher HQ commo

B: No one in the unit is interested in an "of the nominated" award that will probably be presented at a banquet they
won't attend anyway.

Personally, I'd prefer to submit a member for an Achievement award that has a dec they can wear, then for an OTY
that generally has a cert and a handshake.  There's also far more chance of the former getting approved.

If the awards had objective standards related to the duty, even as the baseline, and everyone in those duties was considered,
CAP would have far more popular awards, with far more respect.

Put it this way, when highly active members with contacts throughout the Wing and Region see an OTY recipient and they
have never heard the name, especially if its for a high-visibility role, it's likely not an OTY, but an OTN, which defeats the whole purpose.

You might make that part of the consideration when deciding the winner(s) - ask around to see if anyone has ever heard or dealt with them
outside the people who wrote the submission.

[GaryVC]

B: No one in the unit is interested in an "of the nominated" award that will probably be presented at a banquet they
won't attend anyway.

Personally, I'd prefer to submit a member for an Achievement award that has a dec they can wear, then for an OTY
that generally has a cert and a handshake.  There's also far more chance of the former getting approved.

This sounds like an argument for the recognition ribbon which was discussed recently in another thread. It was designed but never approved.

[Eclipse]

This sounds like an argument for the recognition ribbon which was discussed recently in another thread. It was designed but never approved.

I guess it sort of looks that way, but I'm not sure I'd support the idea for the OTYs, or I'd prefer a specific ribbon
of a different design for OTYs.

At least that would show you were an OT of "something" at some point.

[Chappie]

Having served on the CAWG Awards Committee several years ago, I know that all nominees for OTY awards received a CommComm whether they received the OTY for their particular duty assignment that was recognized.  The awardee got the plaque and went on for region and possible national consideration.  I believe that practice is still continued today.   That would suffice in my books (having received a ribbon and three plaques - wing/region/national for the OTY recognition in my category).

[Chappie]

On a side note....the Squadron/Group commanders (IMHO) should make sure that they nominate individuals for the OTY awards.   CAP is a volunteer organization...and recognition of a member's contribution/service should be in the form of a certificate, ribbon (based on the criteria set forth in CAPR 39-3) or an OTY nomination (should it be merited).   This is the only "paycheck" that they often receive in CAP.   I have seen great individuals who have served in this organization for years that have not received a CommComm or have never been nominated for an award.  This is a sad commentary on the commanders whom they served.   This is a cultural problem that needs to be addressed.   When I served on the CAWG awards committee, I can attest that some groups did not submit any nominations at all (which was consistent in the nearly 6 years I was on the committee - you could count on certain groups never submitting - sad....and there were 7 groups/61 squadrons - nearly 1300 members to choose from.  66 Squadrons and 3-4 groups could not submit 1 person for each of the 10 or so categories.