Photo by Samuel King Jr./U.S. Air Force
Workforce, Development, and Health (WDH) examines the Department of the Air Force’s workforce size and composition, and it addresses the best ways to define, sustain, renew, deliver, and coordinate critical workforces. WDH also considers personnel development, such as training, job opportunities, and career advancement, and it analyzes the physical and mental health of the workforce. WDH's research encompasses the total workforce: active-duty, guard, reserve, civilian, and contractor personnel.
This quarter’s newsletter includes items related to personnel management during austerity, the demographics of sexual assault, acquiring digital fluency, and other topics key to Air Force workforce issues.
Read the May 2023 Newsletter See past issues
U.S. Space Force leadership envisions a service in which Guardians transition easily between full- and part-time service to provide greater flexibility as mission needs ebb and flow and to retain talent. Five impediments discussed in this report make it unnecessarily difficult to make these transitions between types of service.
The Fiscal Year 2019 National Defense Authorization Act established an alternative framework for setting promotion policies for military officers in competitive categories. The authors examine whether a shift to alternative promotion authority (APA) would be beneficial to the U.S. Air Force, how it would be implemented, and the use of related policy options — merit sequencing and lineal zone management — under either conventional or APA.
The authors set out to identify ways to enable the airfield operations (AO) career fields to respond to the needs created by the Dynamic Force Employment concept and the USAF implementation of Agile Combat Employment by reviewing USAF and joint documents for background, interviewing experts to learn current challenges and the potential impact of new demands, and developing tools to analyze the ability of AO personnel to meet those demands.
Researchers conduct a qualitative literature review and interviews with subject-matter experts to identify the Department of the Air Force's (DAF's) existing and planned efforts to improve diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in its workforce. The report offers a snapshot of 2021 DEI efforts, highlighting potential strengths and limitations. Recommendations focus on better evaluation and ways to sustain proactive DEI efforts across the DAF.
