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A guide
This article was written to help reporting officials and senior enlisted advisors properly write and submit fitness reports (Fit Reps). The writing of a Fit Rep is one of an officer's most critical responsibilities.1 The overwhelming majority of officers take this duty extremely seriously. Regardless of your knowledge of report writing or your years of experience, this article will assist you in your duties. I will make some general comments and guidance on reports, address each of the sections on the report itself, cover adverse reports, and close by explaining some of the common errors and myths.
The basic purpose of a FitRep is to record and evaluate a Marine's performance during a specific time period. Reporting officials should be honest and forthright when writing a report. They need to properly use reports to directly communicate with the Commandant and Manpower and Reserve Affairs officials who use FitReps to promote, assign, and retain Marines.2 If a reporting official does not write an accurate report or is not completely forthright in capturing the performance of a Marine, that Marine may be promoted or assigned to a position that is above his skill level. You may come into contact with a Marine in this situation sometime during your Marine Corps career. Everyone wonders how this Marine was promoted to his current rank or who screened this Marine's record prior to this assignment. In the vast majority of these cases, the Marine in question has nothing in his record to suggest that he should not be promoted or that he is not qualified for a billet. This happens because reporting officials throughout this Marine's career failed to accurately capture the Marine's performance.
Reporting officials of all grades and experience levels will do well in their report writing responsibilities when they utilize their senior enlisted Marines in the process. Some reporting officials are nervous when approaching a senior enlisted Marine for help in this process, while other reporting officials do not think that senior enlisted Marines should tell them how to write reports. No matter the reason, reporting officials need to use their senior enlisted Marines in this process. They can be a wealth of knowledge about a Marine's performance during the reporting period. However, the...