CMSAF: Airmen want good leaders

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ROBINS AIR FORCE BASE, Ga. (AFPN) --  Leadership, quality-of-life issues, retention and Stop-Loss were subjects discussed by the chief master sergeant of the Air Force during a visit here recently.

Chief Master Sgt. of the Air Force Gerald Murray asked airmen to tell him what they saw as positive and negative aspects of service today. One of the things that continued to come up was that they took great pride in deploying, even in the face of increased work loads.

“We value our service. We value what we do. We know the American people value what we do, but we know also that it comes with sacrifices and strain,” the chief said.

"The thing that they constantly brought up as one of greatest stressors of service today is the long work hours and the time away from family," he said. "I find the same concern across the Air Force today.”

With all of the Air Force’s needs, Murray said he still finds that people “just want to be treated fairly, to have people who will care about them and to have supervisors who are being good role models for their people."

Also, Murray said quality-of-life initiatives are always an important element in leaders' decisions and a key to maintaining the force's morale and readiness.

"We've had some tremendous successes in the past few years in the way of our pay, benefits and compensation, and we look for that to continue," he said. "We will continue to fund, at least this year, 100 percent tuition assistance for (airmen) to be able to go to school in their off-duty time. Add to that, we will see in 2004 another targeted pay raise that will range from 2 percent for our airman (basics) up to 6.25 percent for some of our senior (noncommissioned officers)."

Another success story is in housing, Murray said. Air Force leaders have increased square-footage allowances as well as supporting military construction and privatization efforts to build new housing and improve family housing.

"We've initiated a new standard for dormitories called 'dorms-four-airmen,' which is a cluster of four rooms around a common living area that will provide more square footage for our airmen," he said. "Each will have a single bedroom, walk-in closets and bathrooms around a common area that gives them a full kitchen area."

Retention and bonuses are other focus areas for Air Force leaders, Murray said.

"Each career field has its own stressors that contribute to the reasons for selective re-enlistment bonuses for those career fields," he said. "We are constantly evaluating those reasons. They range from competition in the civilian sector to the demands of service.

"People make decisions to separate or do something else based on the stresses of the job and their families. So we constantly assess that," he said.

Re-enlistment bonuses are based on more than just retention numbers, Murray said. In fact, the Air Force retention rate this year is the highest in the last five years, and much of that is not attributed to bonuses.

"What we've seen on (bonuses) this year is one of the most significant in years; 100 of our Air Force specialty codes were decreased or dropped off the … list; 40 were increased," he said. "We evaluate this twice a year to make sure we are keeping a fresh, consistent look at our Air Force career fields."

Murray also addressed Stop-Loss in light of Operation Iraqi Freedom winding down and people returning to their normal retirement and separation plans.

"We are working to balance the force. That is one of our main initiatives right now to identify our combat requirements and our expeditionary requirements," he said. "We are moving authorizations from less-(stressed) career fields into higher-(demand) career fields. That was part of the initiative of our retraining efforts in balancing the force."

But despite some misconceptions, he said Stop-Loss is not exactly tied to the balance of the force or steady-state requirements.

"Stop-Loss is set for specifics of the operations that we're in," the chief said. "We may be balanced and may have the right amount of people in a steady state of our force. But, depending on what the requirements are in a conflict or an operation, we may need to hold specific individuals or people in Air Force specialty codes to be able to do that. Stop-Loss will always be looked at and evaluated from an operational standpoint." (Courtesy of Air Force Materiel Command News Service)