Air Force Writer EPR


How to Write an EPR

Le Introduction


The Introduction: this is the only line where descriptive, flowery terms are tolerated. It used to be that raters could fill up 13 lines with a lot of fluffy, descriptive words. That sometimes made filling in those 13 lines easier. But these days they want terse, to-the-point descriptions of accomplishments --no fluff. But, to accurately describe a person, some descriptive words are needed. This is allowed on this line. It's a real challenge to summarize a person's character in a single line and not even a complete sentence at that.

Sample introduction statements:

How should you describe the ratee's performance? Relax your mind and meditate on what this person means to you. Close your eyes and contemplate how his or her presence has influenced your workcenter. What single facet of his or her personality stands out the most clearly? When you have it, summarize that quality in a couple of adjectives and then summarize the positive results of that quality.

If the person being rated is a SSgt or above, many squadrons insist on stratification. Stratification is a word meaning to describe a person's performance compared to his peers. The squadron wants us to document exactly how the ratee compares to his co-workers in the office. Traditionally this is done within the first line. When you consider that you have to somehow satisfy this requirement in addition to summarizing a person's character --all in a single sentence fragment --you realize that the rater has to a warrior poet.

Sample stratification/introduction statements:

Of course, this begs the question: Who is number two? I don't think I've ever seen a number two stratification. In order to honestly capture that #1 position, the rater may confine the rated to a particular subset. For example, #1 of new assignees! Or #1 of 3-levels in upgrade training! Or #1 of left-handed Chevy owners!

Note: Don't leave a lot of white space or unused space at the end of a bullet statement. Officially, white space is OK. Because the goal is to accurately describe the ratee's performance with no unnecessary clutter so inevitably white space will naturally occur. But, if you want to go the extra mile, if you want to demonstrate that your troop is important to you and worthy of a good rating, this is where you can demonstrate a little extra effort. Reword the statement so that there is no more than five or six spaces at the end of each statement. Make that block just chock full of text --as if you just couldn't say enough good things about this character. When the Additional Rater or future reviewers of the EPR see how well it was written and how someone labored over it, it should make them realize that this person was viewed as a person worth the effort. In real life though, even if you do spend an extra couple of hours consuming all the white space, it could all be lost if the chain of command edits it.

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