Air Force Chief Master Sgt. David Flosi is working to reduce the number of job types or what is known as Air Force Specialty Codes (AFSC) to reduce overlap in different career fields. At the Air and Space Forces Association Conference near Washington D.C. in September, Flosi was able to highlight the story of Special Operations Senior Airman Marlene Guerrero.
Airman Guerrero is a fuels technician who is also trained on hydraulics with the added responsibility of serving as a dedicated assistant crew chief. Flosi shared how she had fixed a forward-deployed aircraft with a hydraulic issue.
Changing Air Force Career Fields
One of Flosi’s main initiatives as a leader in the Air Force is to look at career fields and allow airmen to be able to take on more tasks. In turn, he believes reducing the number of AFSCs available to airmen will give them more skills to do more.
When Flosi left his previous role at Air Force Materiel Command he said this, “Make every day count. Embrace the change; this is a time of consequence, and if everyone in our command can find a way to acknowledge the good in every day and every opportunity, we can successfully move in the right direction to meet the needs of today’s power completion.”
Flosi works to take the successful changes he made at AFMC and translate them to the Air Force. While the focus in AFMC was often on civilians, he now works to see what changes can be implemented for the enlisted force. So far, there has not been any official information provided about this upcoming change, but his words at the Air and Space Forces Association Conference are another example of him discussing this change.
Back in August at the Senior Enlisted Leader International Summit in Washington D.C., he touched specifically on the Maintenance career field. “Fifty-four of them are types of aircraft, 54 different specific career paths,” Flosi mentioned during a speech at the event. “What we realized is, that’s just not going to work in this environment, so we’re working on a project now to reduce that to less than 10.”
He expanded his statement at the media roundtable by saying, “essentially 80% of the work that’s done by our aircraft maintainers is 20% of the total tasks that they’re qualified on” and said by reducing the job specialties, it could “provide us more agility on the flight line.”
Concerns Arise Over Expanding Airmen’s Responsibilities
But not everyone is on board with this new change. While it is meant to broaden the skills of airmen and allow them to do more, it is concerning to some airmen that they will be doing more with less. On social media a post proposing the idea in an Air Force Amn/Nco/Snco Facebook page members of the group were quick to point out that there were problems that leaders might not be thinking of when working to implement this change.
For example, one commenter said, “This is a dumb move. That’s too much for one individual to know, plus as soon as they’re trained, you’re going to lose them.” Others were wary of the new system but open to a new way of doing things – as long as there wasn’t more work with fewer workers.
Flosi has heard the concerns of airmen and has addressed them by saying, “We definitely acknowledge that this is not an effort to do more with less. We’re not trying to, like, squeeze 10 people’s worth of work into five people,” Flosi added. “We want to have the capability for an airman to do as much as they have capacity for.”
Finding the right balance in giving airmen more opportunities without overstressing their capabilities is going to be a difficult task. But with the Air Force struggling to meet their recruiting goal, maybe it is time to look at the roles within the military community at large to help ensure that airmen receive the training they can use after their time in the military is over.
