Green endorsements are definitely still awarded. The recipient gets two rather corporate-looking certificates with a brief citation, one A4 and one logbook-sized, and also a RAF Safety Centre coin...
It’s not about the ‘tat’ though, it’s about the recognition, and as with honours and awards the following are required:
- An event which offers some potential of being written up (the least important thing on this list);
- Someone in the chain of command finding out about it;
- That someone caring enough about their people to devote time (often hours) to crafting a recommendation instead of fretting about whatever irrelevances their own Boss is interested in that week;
- That someone actually being able to write: note the demise of ISS a decade ago;
- That someone knowing how to structure and (truthfully) embellish a recommendation to maximise the chance of success.
The last is common corporate knowledge in the Army but not in the other services, meaning that effort has to be made to learn it, preferably from someone with a track record of successful recommendations. I would go so far as to say that honours and awards tell you as much about the recommender as the recipient.