What are the two most important responsibilities of a leader in the Army? Mission accomplishment and soldier welfare.
And what is a Non-Commissioned Officer’s (NCO) principal duty and responsibility? Training. Through education and training , NCOs are charged with ensuring the success of their entire units.
The NCO Evaluation Report (NCOER) was developed to evaluate non-commissioned officers’ performance and potential, and identify those individuals best qualified for promotion and assignments to positions of higher responsibility. In this reporting system, three kinds of evaluations are given; duty evaluations, school evaluations, and DA evaluations. Duty and school evaluations are single time-and-place evaluations while DA evaluations cover the entire career of non-commissioned officers and evaluate an officer’s ability to perform at current and higher grades. In making DA evaluations, the Army considers factors including: 1) experience and expertise and how an officer compares with their peers; 2) duty performance, judged by how well a soldier performs their assigned tasks and how well they meet professional values for their respective corps; and 3) leader qualifications including specialist training, the length of service, civil schooling, military schooling, or other unique skills.
All NCOs receive an Evaluation Report, or an NCOER. Two forms used for the NCOER are the DA Form 2166–8 which provides performance and potential assessments of each rated NCO, and the DA 2166–8-1 which is the Counseling/Checklist Record. These forms pass through a rating chain which consists of the rated NCO, a senior rater, and a reviewer.
When filling out the DA 2166 8, there are two excellent reasons to use PDFfiller. The first is that no handwritten comments are allowed on the NCOER, and consistency in formatting is a must. All forms should be filled out electronically, according to Army specifications (for more detailed information on filling out DA-2166-8 see the Army Writer website . PDFfiller allows you to easily fill out the DA 2166 8 form online, customizing your form and producing a polished final product.
Secondly, the NCOER follows an important signatory order and submission procedure. In Part II, the authentication portion of the form, the rater’s signature must be followed by the senior rater’s signature, which in turn must be followed by the reviewer’s signature. The last person to sign the NCOER should be the rated NCO. The NCO-ER may be signed 14 days prior to the “thru” date, at which point the report will be forwarded to HQDA. PDFfiller’s new Send-to-sign feature allows you to send a document to be digitally signed by up to 20 recipients in a specific order. You will receive a confirmation email each time the document is signed, enabling you to keep close tabs on the reporting system. For more on PDFfiller’s Send-to-sign, you can check out this short You Tube
One final consideration in filling out NCOER is that a single report should not, by itself, determine an NCOs Career. Recognizing continuous professional development and growth rather than demanding immediate, uncompromising perfection is what best serves the NCO, and ultimately, the Army!
Click here to get started with PDFfiller’s fillable DA 2166 8 Form now. For more help on filling out DA 2166 8 check out the tutorial video below.
