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ENLISTED
CHAPTER 5
SERVICE RECORDS
One of your most important responsibilities as a
Personnelman (PN), will be to maintain the enlisted
service records of personnel attached to your command.
This chapter will talk about your responsibilities for
maintaining enlisted service records and why your role
is so important.
Although each enlisted service
member shares the responsibility for making sure his or
her service record is accurate and up to date, you the
PN, must make sure you do your part. In your office,
you will have physical possession of these records. You
will be assigned the job of maintaining them properly,
completely, and accurately. You will be required and
expected to do this. The people of your command will
depend on you and trust in your personal integrity.
After studying the information in this chapter, you
should be able to explain the importance of the enlisted
service records, why your role in the maintenance of
these records is so critical, and the actions you should
take to keep these records accurate and current. You
should also be able to recognize the general form of the
enlisted service record and identify the documents that
belong on the left and right sides, explain the purpose
of each page, describe the appropriate entries required
for each page, and recognize the procedures you should
follow to make the required changes and corrections to
keep the information in these records accurate and up
to date. You should also be able to describe the uses and
requirements for submission of enlisted performance
evaluation reports and the eligibility criteria for good
conduct awards. Finally, you should be able to explain
the significance of the verification, accountability, and
disposition procedures of enlisted service records.
IMPORTANCE OF ENLISTED
SERVICE RECORDS
Have you ever asked yourself what the significance
of the enlisted service record really is? Did you know
that the information in a member’s service record is
used to make a variety of choices that will affect that
member’s life and career? You may or may not know
it, but many very important decisions are made based
on the information contained in the service record. For
example, information in the service record helps your
commanding officer (CO) determine whether or not an
individual is eligible for advancement. Information in
the service record is also used for decisions concerning
a person’s next duty assignment. Information is further
used to complete appropriate documents concerning
disciplinary infractions.
Many other decisions are
made based on information contained in the service
record; therefore, it is vitally important that the
information contained in these records be accurate and
complete. This is where you come in.
Keeping enlisted service records up to date with
accurate entries is not an easy job. As a PN assigned to
this job, you will face many routine challenges.
Because you will be working with so many records and
names, you will always have to pay close attention to
detail. You have probably already noticed this in the
personnel office at your command.
Oftentimes, there are individuals with common last
names such as Smith and Jones. Some of these people
may even have the same first name! It can get confusing
when you have individuals with the same name. You
must be very careful to correctly identify an individual’s
service record when you make service record entries or
file documents. You have probably already seen errors
in enlisted service records, such as entries that you know
for a fact should not have been made. You also have
probably seen service records that have documents on
the left side that should not be there. Sometimes, the
members notice these discrepancies themselves and
wonder how the documents got there or why certain
entries were made. The answer is simple. The PN who
was maintaining the records was not paying attention to
detail and made the inappropriate entries or filed the
wrong documents.
The importance of properly maintaining enlisted
service records is your responsibility. You probably
take pretty good care of your own service record. You
probably make sure it contains all the proper entries and
documents that pertain only to you, right? Why should
any of your shipmates expect anything less? You
should maintain your shipmates’ service records as
carefully as you maintain your own. One enlisted
service record is not more important than another; it
does not matter if it is yours or one of your shipmates’.
Actually, you do not own your enlisted service record
any more than your shipmates own theirs. All enlisted
service records are the property of the U.S.
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