Sergeants are on the rise in the U.S. Army Reserve, where a new initiative to promote more young soldiers more quickly is busting through a cultural gridlock and aiming to put an end to a yearslong shortage of NCOs.

Thousands of Army Reserve soldiers in the ranks of specialist and corporal have waited an average of almost seven years for promotion to sergeant, an advancement that takes about three years in the Regular Army.

Over time, slow promotion rates thinned the senior NCO ranks. NCOs weren’t replaced when people retired or left the service, and the number of specialists and corporals performing the duties of NCOs without the requisite education or commensurate authority or pay grew.

Lt. Gen. Jody Daniels, chief of the Army Reserve and commander of U.S. Army Reserve Command, said promotions slowed for thousands of junior soldiers because leaders had relied solely on a standard of an individual’s readiness without also considering potential.

“Too many of us were using the wrong standard,” she said, explaining that on several troop visits around the world, soldiers told her, “I’ve been told I’m not ready. I need to mature some more, get more technical skills, whatever.”

Instead, she said, rather than consider only a soldier’s technical and warfighting skills, a soldier’s potential to perform in a leadership role should be considered equally. Potential, she said, is a quality that factors into almost every other promotion to the next grade. “Why weren’t we using [that standard] for specialists?” she asked. “Somehow it had gotten into our DNA that we were just going to talk about ‘Are they ready’ versus ‘Do they [demonstrate] potential.’”

Tackling Imbalance

By more aggressively promoting specialists and corporals to sergeant, a grade known as E-5 on military pay charts, the Army Reserve hopes to begin filling a future bench of sergeants, staff sergeants, sergeants first class, master sergeants and sergeants major who can move up once the lower NCO ranks are filled.

To tackle the imbalance in the enlisted force, a new initiative called “E-5 in 5” aims to promote specialists and corporals to sergeant within five years of joining the Army Reserve, not only to fill the pipeline with future leaders, but to keep young soldiers engaged and interested in staying in the service.

“What this initiative does is it essentially brings in education and it addresses systems, processes and the culture of the organization,” said Command Sgt. Maj. Andrew Lombardo, senior enlisted adviser to the chief of the Army Reserve and command sergeant major of Army Reserve Command.

The goal is to build an NCO “bench in the future” by creating an excess of sergeants now, he said. “Making [specialists and corporals] into noncommissioned officers gives them a stake in the organization,” he said. “We want them to be able to lead their small part of the Army, and we want them to be able to do that within the first five years.”

Years of Understrength

When Daniels became the Army Reserve chief in July 2020, becoming the first woman to hold the position, she checked the component’s troop strength and “observed that for probably the last 15 years we have been understrength at our senior NCO grades,” she said. “I was like, how do I get after this? Let’s start with the E-5 population.”

Intent on filling the NCO pipeline for the benefit of the Army Reserve and for the person who succeeds her in July after her four-year assignment ends, Daniels challenged her leaders with a “big, hairy, audacious goal,” a business term that, she said, “didn’t resonate for nothing.”

Daniels also pushed for an easier promotion board process, whittling down to two pages the pile of papers once required, pointing out that most of a soldier’s record is already in digital form.

“But we were still going slower by one month every single year during my tenure in promoting our specialists to sergeants. This was completely counterintuitive,” she said.

Frustrated with the lack of movement in junior soldier promotions as her tenure progressed, last summer, Daniels turned to her chief personnel officer, Col. Tom  Akerlund, and tasked him with finding out how long it was taking to promote soldiers and how many were languishing on promotion lists.

“I was flabbergasted,” said Akerlund, whose team determined that it took an average of 6.7 years from the time a soldier joined the Army Reserve to promotion to sergeant. “Right now, there are a little over 7,000 soldiers on what’s called the promotion recommended list. Those are basically another 7,000 soldiers that potentially could become E-5s,” he said in late January.

Weekly reports that Akerlund’s office prepares for Daniels show that as of March 1, the Army Reserve senior NCO ranks were understrength. Staff sergeants were at 75% of an authorized strength of about 24,600, sergeants first class were at 62% of an authorized strength of about 20,000, master sergeants were at 80% of an authorized strength of about 6,400, and sergeants major were at 72% of an authorized strength of about 1,500.

‘Flooding the Zone’

The E-5 in 5 initiative was established and rolled out in August because of the data dive. At the time, the Army Reserve was short 3,000 sergeants—it was at 87% of its authorized strength of about 31,500 sergeants. As of late January, more than 6,200 soldiers had been promoted to sergeant, pushing that assigned strength to over 103%, Daniels said.

With the intention of “flooding the zone a little bit” by increasing the number of sergeants beyond the number of jobs available, Daniels said she received an exception to policy from the Department of the Army deputy chief of staff for personnel to increase the number of sergeants up to 110% over strength to create an excess of sergeants.

In time, she reasoned, sergeants in the double-slotted jobs with more time in grade would begin to be promoted to staff sergeant, and NCO ranks above that also would be filled as more promotions occurred. With more staff sergeants, she said, the warrant officer pipeline also would move faster.

To bolster the initiative, the Army Reserve published a step-by-step overview of the junior enlisted promotion process. It includes guidance for leaders on who should be enrolled in the Distributed Learning and Basic Leadership courses, as well as how to host flexible promotion boards and when to use temporary promotions.

“This is a huge endeavor that we’re trying to move forward with,” said Akerlund, whose job was to ensure that the E-5 in 5 process was “digestible” and understandable among leaders assessing soldiers for promotion.

“My guidance to my team here is essentially to remove idiocracy from these processes and focus on simplicity and common sense,” he said.

Cutting Red Tape

Daniels’ tenure has been marked with an energetic quest to dissolve entrenched bureaucracy in favor of giving soldiers what they joined the Army Reserve to do—tough, realistic training during their monthly battle assemblies.

The wave of long-overdue promotions is “creating some trust at the lower level that the high end, the three-stars and the command sergeants major, do care about soldiers,” Daniels said.

She promoted several soldiers on recent trips in ceremonies that “were heartwarming” to see, she said.

Sgt. Kariken Stepanian is a paralegal assigned to Army Reserve Command at Fort Liberty, North Carolina, formerly known as Fort Bragg. He was promoted in September after serving in the Army Reserve since 2019, the last two years as a specialist.

“I’ve seen people who have been waiting in limbo for 10 years, but once this program came out, people were able to get school seats. I went to [the Distributed Learning Course] with a bunch of people that had literally been waiting for years for a chance to get promoted,” Stepanian said, pointing to the E-5 in 5 initiative as the reason promotions happened.

There was initial resistance among unit leaders with the push to promote specialists, Daniels said. Once they understood the initiative and its focus on soldiers’ potential, they got on board, she said.

“Everyone matures every time [they] go to a new position. It’s a learning experience. There’s always a learning curve,” Daniels said. “The question is, can you actually accomplish that curve, or have you stagnated and you’re never going to be able to serve at that next level.”