Download or read book Improving Demographic Diversity in the United States Air Force Officer Corps written by Nelson Lim and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 70 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Despite the Air Force's efforts to create a force that mirrors the racial, ethnic, and gender differences of the nation's population, minority groups and women are underrepresented in the active-duty line officer population, especially at senior levels (i.e., colonel and above). This report examines the reasons for this, with the goal of identifying potential policy responses. The authors analyzed data from multiple sources on Air Force eligibility, youths' intention to serve, accessions, retention, and promotion. A key finding is that African Americans and Hispanics are underrepresented in the Air Force compared with the nation's population mainly because they meet Air Force officer eligibility requirements at lower rates (e.g., they are much less likely than whites to have a college degree). Another reason for lower representation of minorities and women among senior leaders is that, once in the military, women and minorities are less likely to choose career fields that give them the highest potential to become senior leaders. In addition, female officers have lower retention rates than male officers, and the reasons for this are not clear. Finally, the authors comprehensively examined the Air Force promotion system and found no evidence to suggest it treats women and minorities differently than white men with similar records. The authors recommend that the Air Force should seek comparable quality across ethnic/minority groups in the accession processes, since competitiveness even at this stage is a predictor of promotion success. More racial/ethnic minorities and women who are cadets and officers should be in rated career fields, which have the highest promotion rates to the senior ranks."--Publisher's website.

Download or read book Advancement and Retention Barriers in the U S Air Force Civilian White Collar Workforce written by Kirsten M. Keller and published by . This book was released on 2021-07-31 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Air Force experiences challenges in maintaining a demographically diverse civilian workforce. This report documents the results of a study designed to better understand the challenges that Air Force civilian women, racial/ethnic minorities, and individuals with disabilities in General Schedule (GS) (and equivalent) positions may face in advancing to higher pay grades as well as factors they consider when deciding whether to remain with the Air Force. The study analyzed Air Force personnel data to identify demographic differences in advancement and retention patterns and conducted focus groups and interviews with close to 300 participants to better understand potential advancement and retention barriers. The report describes key findings related to differences in advancement and retention and provides recommendations for potential changes to Air Force policies and practices to help grow and retain civilian talent from across all demographics.

Download or read book Understanding Demographic Differences in Undergraduate Pilot Training Attrition written by David Schulker and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Prepared for the United States Air Force"--Title page.

Download or read book Department of the Air Force Officer Talent Management Reforms written by Matthew Walsh and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Department of the Air Force is revamping the way it manages officer development and promotion. The Air Force Personnel Policy Simulation Tool models the effects of personnel policy changes to identify potentially adverse consequences.

Download or read book Black and Blue written by Jaron Hakim Roux and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 125 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This monograph begins with a question: why is the Air Force not meeting its diversity objectives in the officer corps? By examining this question through the lenses of organizational culture, cognitive reasoning, and physical representation, this study illuminates how the Air Force is failing to meet its objectives. In turn, this study includes some considerations to help the Air Force make immediate and long-term lasting improvements. This thesis consists of six chapters, which are broken out as follows. Chapter 1 serves as an introduction to the study and outlines essential definitions of diversity and how the Air Force defines its diversity goals. Chapter 2 presents the theoretical framework from existing academic literature, which forms the foundation for analysis. Chapter 3 focuses on the career progression of African-American officers, as they are the worst performing officer demographic in terms of promotion. Chapter 4 applies the theoretical constructs to the case study through analysis. Finally, Chapter 5 offers recommendations and areas of future research which may help guide Air Force decision makers in their mission to increase diversity. Chapter 6 is an epilogue that gives the author's unique perspective and experience as one of only 275 black pilots in the Air Force. Of the 64,000 officers in the Air Force, there are approximately 15,000 pilots"--Abstract.

Download or read book Strengthening U S Air Force Human Capital Management written by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2021-03-02 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The USAir Force human capital management (HCM) system is not easily defined or mapped. It affects virtually every part of the Air Force because workforce policies, procedures, and processes impact all offices and organizations that include Airmen and responsibilities and relationships change regularly. To ensure the readiness of Airmen to fulfill the mission of the Air Force, strategic approaches are developed and issued through guidance and actions of the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Manpower, Personnel and Services and the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Manpower and Reserve Affairs. Strengthening US Air Force Human Capital Management assesses and strengthens the various U.S. Air Force initiatives and programs working to improve person-job match and human capital management in coordinated support of optimal mission capability. This report considers the opportunities and challenges associated with related interests and needs across the USAF HCM system as a whole, and makes recommendations to inform improvements to USAF personnel selection and classification and other critical system components across career trajectories. Strengthening US Air Force Human Capital Management offers the Air Force a strategic approach, across a connected HCM system, to develop 21st century human capital capabilities essential for the success of 21st century Airmen.

Download or read book Turning Aspirations Into Reality written by Scovill Wannamaker Currin and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 87 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This study is an analysis of diversity within the US Air Force officer corps and senior leader ranks. Throughout the analysis, the project strives to answer the following research question: Does the US Air Force have sufficient diversity in its officer corps and senior leader positions? If not, why not? How can the US Air Force improve the situation? Admittedly, this research question also comes with an inherent difficulty. In the end, how does a researcher define "sufficient diversity?" Empirical research is quite clear that no optimal level of diversity exists. Instead, a sufficient level of organizational diversity is often context dependent and different for every organization."--Abstract.

Download or read book Changing Demographics and the Impact on Air Force Officer Retention written by and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 37 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Retention is a primary concern for the U.S. Air Force today, and the Air Force needs to explore all avenues of retention for its officers. The Air Force should carefully evaluate the impact of changing demographics on its officer retention. A review of the demographic studies performed by the Air Force Chaplain Office in the early 1980s and the National Families and Work Institute in 1997 reflect the trend towards an increasing concern for a work/life balance among both military members and their civilian counterparts. As the labor shortage for professional skills continues, the Air Force must look for innovative ways to retain its officers. The private sector leads the way with creative programs that are diversified enough to attract both the career professionals who aspire to be a CEO one day, and the career-family professionals who more highly value the balance of a strong family and successful career. Many of the programs begun by private industry are viable options for the Air Force; it only depends on how high a priority the Air Force places on retaining its professional corps. The Air Force should also consider adopting family support programs implemented by other armed forces, such as the Royal Australian Air Force. Improving family support programs is an important step in modifying the current career progression plan for officers. Implementing a dual-track career progression program will allow officers to choose options that provide a better career/family balance without sacrificing certain career success. This career flexibility, which has already proven successful in the private sector, will be one more strong factor in retaining quality officers.

Download or read book Population Benchmarking for the U S Department of the Air Force written by Tiffany Berglund and published by . This book was released on 2023 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Department of the Air Force (DAF) has prioritized growing and maintaining a diverse workforce across all pay grades. Because most positions are filled by promoting from within, having a diverse pool of candidates at the point of accession is critical to accomplishing the DAF's goal. However, a large segment of the U.S. population is not eligible to enlist as an airman or to be commissioned as an officer, and eligibility criteria affect women and racial and ethnic minority candidates differently than they affect White men. Understanding the population that meets the eligibility requirements to enlist in the military or to be admitted to the U.S. Air Force Academy (USAFA) or the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) or Officer Training School (OTS) is crucial to determining the potential demographic makeup of DAF accessions and, ultimately, all DAF personnel. In this report, the authors create benchmarks for comparison with the DAF's accession cohorts by estimating the fraction of the eligible (and propensed) population, using ten mutually exclusive categories of gender and race and ethnicity. The benchmarks provide a measure of progress on diversity and inclusion in the force and a comparison to clearly identify whether a demographic's overrepresentation or underrepresentation can be attributed to specific eligibility standards or propensity to serve, or both.

Download or read book Air Force Leadership Diversity written by U. S. Military and published by Independently Published. This book was released on 2019-01-18 with total page 60 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Air Force is not drawing upon its full talent pool for leadership in its most senior positions. This also has another negative affect of creating a general officer cohort that severely lacks diversity. Active duty general officer statistics bear out that the group is 94% white and only 7% female as opposed to the overall Air Force population that is 72% white and 20% female. While more diverse than in the past in terms of Air Force Specialty Code, the general officer cohort is 58% pilot officers, even though the promotion pool for selection to O-6 is only 30% pilot officers. Most people looking at that problem would conclude the problem is with the promotions boards, but the Air Force promotion system itself is not the problem. Leadership decisions to only allow officers selected for promotion from the below-the-promotion zone (BTZ) category to enter into the general officer ranks is one factor. That factor compounds with the Air Force's decision to limit the BTZ opportunity to roughly 3% when it could allow as much as 10% of the population to be BTZ-selectees produces a much smaller pool of officers for selection. Because there are such a high percentage of pilot officers in the general officer cohort this also limits the ability to increase diversity of race, background, gender, thought, experience, culture, and leadership as the pilot officer career field is one of the least diverse groups within the Air Force. It is time to look at different ways to select future general officers for the Air Force. There are many fully qualified and able officers in the mission support category that would be amazing representatives of the Air Force at all levels. We do not have to artificially limit them to capping out at O-6 if we want to encourage diversity in our most senior leadership levels as we seek to create a stronger Air Force that will continue to fulfill an increasingly complex mission.1. Introduction * 2. Boards, Processes, and Policies * 3. Make Up and Organization of the Air Force * 4. Air Force Structure and Command Time Disparity * 5. The Break Down * 6. General Officer Data * 7. Diversity And Why The AF Senior Leadership Is Not As Diverse As Is Could Be * 8. Recommendations

Download or read book Benchmarking Demographic Diversity in Air Force Functional Areas Against Near Equivalent Civilians written by Avery Calkins and published by . This book was released on 2023 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Department of the Air Force (DAF) has placed a strategic focus on improving talent management, including how to build a diverse, equitable, and inclusive workforce. To support the DAF's efforts, in fiscal year 2021, the RAND Corporation's Project AIR FORCE was asked to (1) provide targeted benchmarks and a planning tool that will allow DAF to evaluate the demographic composition of the active-duty workforce overall and functional areas within this workforce and (2) identify practices and opportunities that the DAF can use to support diversity in critical career fields. This report is one of a series of reports meant to address these tasks. In it, the authors describe the construction of career field benchmarks using near-equivalent groups of civilian workers, provide examples using several functional areas, and discuss considerations for interpreting these results. Accompanying this narrative are the Air Force Occupational Diversity Benchmarking Workbooks, a pair of Excel workbooks (one for enlisted personnel and one for officers) containing benchmarks for the demographic distribution of DAF functional areas. The benchmarks are created using civilians working in near-equivalent occupations to DAF occupations, adjusted to account for differences in age and education level between DAF and the civilian workforce. The workbooks contain a menu of benchmark options using both narrow and broad definitions of near equivalent. Each DAF occupation can also be compared to the entire civilian workforce. The authors describe considerations for choosing the most-appropriate civilian comparison group for each occupation and for interpreting comparisons.

Download or read book Difficulties in Accessing a Representative Pilot Force The Demographic Challenge and Views of Minority Pilot Focus Groups written by Jerry M. Barucky and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 9 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The United States Air Force has expressed concern about under representation of minority officers in its pilot force. Historically, there have been relatively smaller percentages of African- American and Hispanic officers among Air Force pilots than might be expected from other demographic and educational data. As part of a more general study of demographic trends and their effects on the Air Force personnel system, researchers were tasked to gather information pertaining to minority community attitudes about the military and flying careers. The researchers gathered this information from focus group interview sessions among African-American and Hispanic pilots and pilot trainees and from Air Force Academy and Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps (AFROTC) minority recruiters. The responses highlight reasons for the lack of interest in flying careers among the most competitive minority students. They also offer suggestions for enhancing the selection/recruitment and training processes to attract a greater percentage of the highly qualified minority students and allow them to compete successfully for pilot positions. This paper presents a brief summary of that report (Barucky, 1998).

Download or read book Strengthening the Military Family Readiness System for a Changing American Society written by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2019-10-25 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The U.S. military has been continuously engaged in foreign conflicts for over two decades. The strains that these deployments, the associated increases in operational tempo, and the general challenges of military life affect not only service members but also the people who depend on them and who support them as they support the nation â€" their families. Family members provide support to service members while they serve or when they have difficulties; family problems can interfere with the ability of service members to deploy or remain in theater; and family members are central influences on whether members continue to serve. In addition, rising family diversity and complexity will likely increase the difficulty of creating military policies, programs and practices that adequately support families in the performance of military duties. Strengthening the Military Family Readiness System for a Changing American Society examines the challenges and opportunities facing military families and what is known about effective strategies for supporting and protecting military children and families, as well as lessons to be learned from these experiences. This report offers recommendations regarding what is needed to strengthen the support system for military families.

Download or read book Officer Classification and the Future of Diversity Among Senior Military Leaders A Case Study of the Army ROTC written by and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 55 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout recent history, the U.S. military has served as a model for racial integration and has seen diversity flourish in its organization. Still, while the enlisted ranks of the U.S. military exhibit a high level of demographic diversity, the leadership of the military has remained demographically homogenous. This report summarizes findings from an exploratory study of a potential barrier to improving demographic diversity in the senior officer ranks. We started with an observation that officers with combat-related career backgrounds, such as the Combat Arms branches of the U.S. Army, tend to populate the top levels of the Army. In 2006, for instance, 80 percent of Army generals were in Combat Arms branches. We also observed that minority officers are disproportionately absent in these key career fields. This report touches on the career field assignment processes for all services and commission sources. We found that each military service (Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps) and commission source (Reserve Officers' Training Corps [ROTC], service academy, and officer training school/officer candidate school) has a distinct career field assignment process. However, because we had limited resources, we concentrated on the Army ROTC process as a detailed case study. As a case study, its results are not fully generalizable to other services or even to other commission sources within the Army. Our primary aims are to highlight the importance of the issue and to motivate the U.S. military to conduct a comprehensive study of the issue.

Download or read book United States Air Force Diversity Strategic Roadmap written by United States Air Force Academy and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 18 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Diversity is a military necessity. Air Force decision-making and operational capabilities are enhanced by diversity among its Airmen, uniformed and civilian, helping make the Air Force more agile, innovative and effective. It opens the door to creative solutions to complex problems and provides our Air Force a competitive edge in air, space and cyberspace. Diversity includes and involves all of us. It is one of the strengths of the United States of America and gives the United States Air Force a decisive advantage as we engage globally. The Air Force broadly defines diversity as a composite of individual characteristics, experiences and abilities consistent with the Air Force Core Values and the Air Force Mission. Air Force diversity includes but is not limited to: personal life experiences, geographic background, socioeconomic background, cultural knowledge, educational background, work background, language abilities, physical abilities, philosophical and spiritual perspectives, age, race, ethnicity and gender. This concept of diversity is to be tailored as specific circumstances and the law require. Diversity encompasses demographic, cognitive/behavioral, organizational/structural and global diversity."--DTIC abstract.

Download or read book Leveraging Diversity of Thought Through Inclusion written by Benjamin Bearman and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 25 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "An Air Force Squadron Officer College instructor once informed her class, 'My squadron commander wanted me in his organization purely for diversity reasons.' The faces of her students ranged from shocked to uncomfortable, given that an African American female just informed them that she was in the squadron as an 'instrument' of diversity. It was not until she concluded with the following statement that her students found relief and amusement: 'And what better way for an Alabama Crimson Tide fan to get diversity of thought in his organization than to include an Auburn Tigers fan?' This example, however humorous, highlights the prevalent perception of what diversity means for many in the Air Force. While the Air Force seeks to attain 'diversity of thought,' many of its policies focus on demographic diversity without providing a clear picture of how it relates to cognitive diversity. Perhaps more important is the Air Force’s ability to leverage diversity through inclusion. To achieve an environment that successfully balances and leverages cognitive diversity through inclusion, the Air Force must establish dedicated resources to explore and develop cognitive-centric programs and measures, create tools to assess inclusiveness, and educate leaders on managing diverse environments. This paper begins with definitions for diversity and inclusion and discusses how demographic diversity and cognitive diversity are related. Next, it discusses the advantages and disadvantages of diversity and the importance of seeking balance in order to maximize inclusiveness. Then, it examines whether or not current Air Force policy supports leveraging cognitive diversity and how the Air Force currently measures and assesses diversity and inclusion. Finally, it provides recommendations for improving policy to refocus Air Force diversity efforts, developing inclusion assessment tools for leadership at all levels, and educating leaders on effectively managing a diverse environment and cultivating inclusiveness within that environment"--Abstract.

Download or read book Branding Icarus written by Jarrod Pendlebury and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 127 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many of the arguments supporting diversity in the military focus on the instrumental benefits available to an organization that embraces differences. Viewed through this lens, diversity risks becoming another "to do," and prioritized according to available resources. Arguing for diversity primarily from the basis of the "capability argument" also fails to challenge the as yet unresolved perceived tension between a military's com-bat effectiveness, and its adherence to the values and laws of the state it protects. This thesis seeks to reframe the diversity debate by arguing that a diverse military reflective of the demography of society is a fundamental necessity in a Western liberal democracy. The paper uses sociological theory to posit that current approaches to diversity in the US Air Force overlook the role of identity in molding behavioral norms and influencing the ability of the organization to process and integrate difference. Using the US Air Force Academy as a case study, this thesis seeks to determine how identities are constructed in early officer training, and how these nascent identities might influence the overall levels of diversity within the organization. By blending quantitative and qualitative evidence, this project concludes that the US Air Force Academy constructs and cultivates exclusive identities that conflict with government initiatives to build a diverse and inclusive organization. The analysis concludes with a number of policy recommendations that the author believes might be beneficial initial steps in re-casting the dominant identity of the US Air Force officer corps.