What the AF Form 931 Actually Is
The Air Force Performance Feedback Worksheet, officially designated as AF Form 931, is the document supervisors use to structure informal counseling sessions with Airmen. It is not the formal evaluation itself. The formal piece is the AF Form 931 or rather the Enlisted Performance System (EPS) track that feeds into the Officer or Enlisted Evaluation System depending on your rating chain. What the 931 actually does is create a written record of the conversations that happen between those formal cycles. Most people think it is paperwork. It is not, at least not in the way people usually treat it. I have filled out more of these than I care to count across multiple duty stations. The form has been through revisions. The current version sits in the AFI 36-2406 ecosystem alongside the other evaluation forms, but it operates in a different lane. It is the tool you pull out before a formal performance review, during developmental counseling, and when you need a paper trail showing that a conversation actually happened. The form itself is available through the Air Force forms management system at my.rafcom.af.mil or directly via the e-Publishing portal.
How to Fill Out the Af Form 931 Performance Feedback Worksheet
Open the blank form and look at the sections. They are laid out in a specific order that matters more than most raters realize. The first section asks for the rater, senior rater, and ratee information including grade, AFSC, and duty title. Get this right the first time. I have seen counselors go back and redo entire counseling logs because a name was misspelled or a rank was written as "SrA" instead of "Sr A1C" or whatever the current abbreviation was at the time. The format changes. Check the latest version if you are unsure. The next section is where the actual feedback lives. You will enter the counseling session date, the type of counseling, and then the core content. The form provides prompts: standards being addressed, accomplishments, deficiencies, and the plan of action. Do not skip the plan of action. This is the part that saves your skin during a board review or a formal grievance if someone later claims you did not properly counsel the Airman. A plan of action is a documented commitment with a timeline. Something like "Airman will complete XYZ training by 30 days from counseling date with follow-up check-in on day 14" is specific enough to hold up. Something vague like "improve performance" is not. The ratee comments section is straightforward but often mishandled. The Airman signs to acknowledge they received the counseling, not necessarily that they agree with it. I learned this the hard way when a ratee signed the form and then later told the OPR board that the counseling was "coerced." The sign-off only proves they read it. The timestamp on the form and the surrounding documentation around the session is what actually protected the counselor in that situation. I kept the email thread showing the schedule was offered, the meeting occurred at the agreed time, and the content was delivered professionally. That file lasted two years.
After the counseling entry is complete, both parties sign and date. The rater keeps a copy. The ratee gets a copy. One copy goes into the counselor's administrative file. If you are using a digital system like the Defense Integrated Human Resources System or the newer Performance Management System, there may be an electronic path. Paper still exists though, and a lot of units still run it dual-track while the transition is happening.
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What People Get Wrong About This Form
The biggest mistake I see is treating the AF Form 931 as a checklist exercise. It is not. A counselor can fill every field perfectly and still produce a document that has zero operational value. The content inside the sections matters more than completing them. Another mistake is thinking this form replaces anything. It does not. It supplements the formal evaluation system. If you are waiting until the annual evaluation cycle to do any counseling, you have already failed the process this form is designed to support. There is also a common misconception about the frequency requirement. The forms themselves do not state a hard number because the governing instruction delegates that to the command level. Some units require quarterly. Others require semi-annually. The Air Force generally expects at least annual formal counseling, but the 931 is typically used more often than that for mid-cycle check-ins. Know what your unit requires before you assume the default applies to you. I ran into a specific problem once where an Airman had three counseling sessions documented on the 931 across a year, but the second and third sessions referenced identical deficiencies that had never been addressed in the plan of action. A reviewer looked at the file and called the entire counseling record into question because it looked copy-pasted. The workaround I ended up using was to draft an addendum noting that the earlier deficiencies had been resolved through prior action, and to make sure every subsequent counseling entry explicitly referenced the prior one by date and section number. Cross-referencing like that closes the gap. Without it, a reviewer sees repetition and assumes negligence.
When the Form Doesn't Work
This worksheet is not a solution for every situation. It will not help if the rater and ratee have a fundamentally broken relationship where one party refuses to engage. No form fixes that. It is also not a substitute for real management. If an Airman is underperforming and the rater has not had any ongoing dialogue with them, slapping a 931 on it at the end of the quarter looks exactly like what it is: damage control after the fact. The form also has a structural limitation around tracking long-term development. It captures the session. It does not automatically track whether the action plan was completed, whether standards were met, or whether the same deficiency appeared three months later. You have to maintain that tracking yourself, usually in a separate log or in your personal notes. If you do not, the 931 becomes a collection of isolated entries with no narrative thread. That is a real problem during promotion boards or when someone requests a formal review of the rating chain. If your unit is dealing with high turnover, frequent reassignment, or a rating chain that changes often, the 931 gets messy fast. The form assumes a stable rater-ratee relationship over a defined period. When that relationship shifts mid-cycle, you need to annotate the change on the form and make sure the incoming rater reviews the prior entries. I have seen files where the new rater just started fresh without acknowledging the prior counseling, which effectively erased that documentation from the record. Always have the incoming rater initial any prior entries they are aware of. One line saying "reviewed and acknowledged" is enough to preserve continuity.
There is also the issue of electronic form corruption or version mismatch. The Air Force rotates form versions and sometimes a unit is running an older PDF while the system expects the newer one. I dealt with a case where a completed paper form was scanned into the system and rejected because the barcode on the form did not match the version in the database. The fix was to request a fresh blank form from the correct source, reprint it, and resubmit. Keep a local copy of the current version in your unit folder so you are not scrambling when you need it. The download link for the latest version of the Af Form 931 Performance Feedback Worksheet is on the official Air Force e-Publishing site at www.e-publishing.af.mil. Search for AF Form 931 in the forms catalog. Make sure you are pulling the most recent revision date. The form number stays the same but the layout changes occasionally. Using an outdated version is one of the easiest ways to get your paperwork sent back. Overall the form is functional but unglamorous. It works when you use it as intended: as a structured tool for ongoing conversation, not as a once-a-year compliance checkbox. The value is in the documentation and the follow-through, not in the sheet itself.
