What’s the difference between a senior lead specialist, and between a senior principal specialist and a senior chief technical specialist? Employees and clients of the World Bank will likely soon have to figure that out.
As the Washington, D.C.-based institution moves forward with broad changes intended to streamline its bureaucracy, it’s also making a similar effort on staff titles. The nomenclature for employees won’t necessarily be shorter than the old titles or make much sense to outsiders, but reform advocates argue they will help the bank create some consistency and harmonization across institutions, offices and employee grade levels, according to a memo to staff from the human resources vice presidency obtained by Devex.
The update sent last week pointed out that there are currently over 3,000 titles in use at the World Bank Group — roughly one for every five employees — and that many of those titles have been introduced “with no real governance or jurisdiction around their use.”
About the author
Paul Stephens
Paul Stephens is a former Devex staff writer based in Washington, D.C. As a multimedia journalist, editor and producer, Paul has contributed to the Los Angeles Times, Washington Monthly, CBS Evening News, GlobalPost, and the United Nations magazine, among other outlets. He's won a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting for a 5-month, in-depth reporting project in Yemen after two stints in Georgia: one as a Peace Corps volunteer and another as a communications coordinator for the U.S. Agency for International Development.
