Faster reviews lead to a gong

Anxiously waiting months for a Military Employment Classification Review Board (MECRB) determination has become a thing of the past with the introduction of a digital work flow system in 2020.

CAPTION: Warrant Officer Class 2 Cheryl Sinclair received a Conspicuous Service Medal in this year’s King’s Birthday honours. Story by Private Nicholas Marquis.

It’s now being developed for triservice implementation, thanks to Warrant Officer Class 2 (WO2) Cheryl Sinclair’s efforts to improve the tool.

“It’s a huge difference. I could now tell you the status of where people are in the system in three minutes,” WO2 Sinclair said.

“The biggest highlight is seeing the statistics on how quickly people now pass through the system; having that full visibility of what’s going on so we can support them.”

The tool improved administration of cases to the point there has been a 50 per cent decrease in waiting times. WO2 Sinclair said this reduced the mental stress on personnel significantly.

For her work improving the tool, WO2 Sinclair received a Conspicuous Service Medal in this year’s King’s Birthday honours.

“Since the introduction of the tool we’ve been able to process cases a lot more efficiently,” she said.

The improved tool allows the MECRB team to allocate processing priorities, simplify the process, seek career manager input, mark cases for follow-up, and process individual cases while being an information outcome repository.

Insisting she is not the only driving force behind the changes, WO2 Sinclair praised Major Charmian McKean, who had a lot of influence on her work.

“It wasn’t until I was called up that I actually got off the phone and cried thinking ‘oh my god, this is real’,” WO2 Sinclair said.

“It was a lot of hard work. Weekends, after hours and a lot of giving up my own life for 18 months while we got it up and running.”

With 30 years of service under her belt, one career highlight was painting the names on the wall of the fallen in Tarin Kowt.

“Seeing it finished and having people walk past and sadly tell stories of how they remembered names on the wall and how they died – that’s something I’ll never forget,” WO2 Sinclair said.

A second was her three-year posting to PNG, where she did catafalque party guard as a warrant officer – the lowest rank at the cenotaph.

Currently working at Army Headquarters for the Royal Commission into Defence and Veterans’ Suicide, she said she still had a few years left in her.

“I’ve been really fortunate and I won’t give up until I am transitioned out some day,” WO2 Sinclair said.

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