An update with regards to this:
The senior officers last night discussed the various options proposed here and have decided upon an initial course of action.
First, there will be promotions higher up the rank structure. This began last night with the promotion of Jemel to Captain. We have had only one captain for quite a period now. Promotions higher up had been postponed to some degree due to the absence of some of the senior command officers. There has elapsed a reasonable time to now consider promotions. This promotion should enable us to promote more officers to replace thise promoted above.
The second decision made has been to create a Senior Lieutenant role. This will allow us to differentiate between those who have served for a longer period of Lieutenant but do not necessarily wish to move to senior officer/ command ranks. It is a way to recognise an Lieutenants participation and commitment to the division. My though is that promotion to Lieutenant Commander could be drawn from officer ranking either Lieutenant or Senior Lieutenant.
Finally, the senior officers are looking at differentiating between different command officers and their experience, attendance and level of command role (e.g. ship captain, battle group commander).
As for developing and gaining awards for expertise, Jemel has put together a series of tests for when officers are changing roles. More advanced assessment criteria could be designed too in order to have officers gain advanced qualifications in operating in a particulae role. There are archived documents with much of this set up which should just require revision. This is something that we will look at further down the line however.