From idea to reality: Airman transforms lengthy training with innovative approach

Published Feb. 14, 2017
By Airman 1st Class Dennis Hoffman
21st Space Wing Public Affairs

PETERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Colo. -- Seventeen hours of an in-house training session? Please for the love of everything good in this world, no – please no.

Five hour computer based training? Save us Chuck Norris.

If it weren’t for the innovative approach Laura Rolfe, 21st Force Support Squadron civilian personnel flight employee relations specialist, took when creating a mandatory training course, those numbers would be a reality. Instead, her training is an action-packed two-and-a-half hours of broken-down, consumable information about the DoD’s new performance management program.

Thanks to Rolfe, the newly implemented Department of Defense Performance Management and Appraisal Program training has been whittled down to a more manageable session. The training is being considered by Air Force Space Command to be the flagship course for supervisors and commanders in the MAJCOM.

On Oct. 28, 2009, the authority for the DoD’s National Security Personnel System was repealed by section 1113 of the National Defense Authorization Act of fiscal year 2010. For the past six years, each respective military branch has been implementing their own appraisal program for their DoD civilians, and now they will be under the same system.

Rolfe said her office was anticipating the new Performance Management Program coming. A representative from the Defense Civilian Personnel Advisory Services office came to train her office and civilian personnelists from each space command base. After a three day training and a meeting with her office staff, Rolfe said she and her team agreed she would take the reins on ensuring civilians and military supervisors at Peterson AFB were properly trained on the new program.

Rolfe willingly took a giant binder packed with hundreds of information-filled pages and consolidated the meat of the training into a two-and-a-half hour, time-efficient course.

“I really do love training,” Rolfe said. “I enjoy taking material and condensing it so it’s simple for people to understand. I had a bunch of ideas for this training, so I came into work with the normal constraints of my eight hour day and read through any and all material I could find. As I processed all this information, I realized that this is not as complicated as it initially seemed.”

After immediate success with this class, and rave reviews in November 2016, Air Force Space Command contacted Rolfe and her team with concerns that her new training would not encompass all the necessary material covered in the five hour CBT.

“A representative from AFSPC/A1 came and sat in on my training in December,” said Rolfe. “They were concerned with allowing our in-house course to fulfill the mandatory DPMAP training requirement, as it was half the time of the CBT. After attending the Peterson AFB course however, the MAJCOM representative stated she got way more out of the Peterson AFB in-house training than she did from the CBT.”

From that December class, AFSPC has commended Rolfe and her team on the DPMAP training, and other AFSPC Bases have showed interest in disseminating the class to their supervisors.

“We are about efficiency,” said Rolfe. “We don’t need to reinvent the wheel, so if my training can help the MAJCOM and the Air Force understand this new program and reduce unnecessary hours of training, we are on board – It’s what we do here at Peterson.”

Officially kicking off April 1, 2017, a majority of DoD civilians will fall under the same management and appraisal system, and Rolfe will have directly educated between 700-800 DoD supervisors, including generals, on DPMAP.

To avoid the 5-hour CBT, schedule a slot in Rolfe’s DPMAP training. Visit https://myetms.wpafb.af.mil click the "Self-Registration" tab. Proceed to click "View All Classes" then "DPMAP-CLASS" to enroll. Have your training manager's information handy or enter your supervisor's information in that block if your trainings manager’s information is not readily available.