Gary Phelps does not have a business card that says 'Gary Phelps, the man who renames jobs.' That would be too direct. His business card — which is itself the subject of an ongoing internal review regarding paper weight and font choice — says Gary Phelps, Organisational Nomenclature Transformation Adviser, Grade 7, People, Culture and Organisational Effectiveness Directorate, Cabinet Office.
It is a title that took eleven weeks to agree upon. It is also, Mr Phelps notes with quiet satisfaction, the fourth title his role has had since he was first appointed in 2013, when he arrived as a Workforce Branding Specialist, a title which was itself replaced the following year by Role Identity and Positioning Consultant, then briefly by Human Capital Nomenclature Lead, before the current designation was finalised following an eighteen-month internal consultation process that produced, among other outputs, a 74-page guidance document on how to name the consultation.
"The important thing," Mr Phelps tells The Daily Despatch, folding his hands on a desk that contains no visible work, "is that titles reflect the genuine complexity and ambition of what people are doing. A title isn't just a label. It's a signal. It tells the world: this person matters."
When asked whether the world, in this case, means other civil servants, Mr Phelps says that is "a really interesting framing" and moves on.
The Portfolio
In eleven years, Mr Phelps has overseen the renaming of approximately 340 job titles across three government departments, a figure he describes as "modest" given the scale of the opportunity. His work is documented in a series of internal reports — each titled, at his suggestion, using terminology he developed himself — which together form what colleagues refer to, with varying degrees of affection, as the Phelps Corpus.
Among his most celebrated transformations: Receptionist became First Contact Experience Facilitator; Assistant Manager became Deputy Empowerment Lead; Office Cleaner became Environmental Services Delivery Operative; and, in what Mr Phelps describes as his "most nuanced piece of work to date," Person Who Books the Meeting Rooms became Spatial Resource Allocation and Scheduling Coordinator.
"That last one was difficult," he admits. "Because the role genuinely is quite complex. There are seventeen meeting rooms across two floors, and some of them have video conferencing equipment that requires advance booking through a separate system. It deserved recognition."
The person in question, Sandra Okafor, who has worked at the department for twenty-three years, told us she had not been consulted on the renaming, had not updated her email signature, and still introduced herself to visitors as "Sandra, who does the rooms." She seemed entirely content with this.
The Methodology
Mr Phelps operates according to what he calls the ELEVATE framework — an acronym that stands for something he was unable to recall precisely during our interview but which he believes includes the words "empowerment," "alignment," and possibly "transformation." The framework, which he developed during a six-month secondment to the Cabinet Office's Workforce Strategy Unit in 2019, guides his assessment of whether any given job title is fit for purpose.
The process begins with a Title Audit, in which Mr Phelps reviews existing role descriptors across a department and identifies those that are, in his assessment, insufficiently aspirational. This is followed by a Stakeholder Engagement Phase, in which Mr Phelps consults with senior managers about what they would like their teams to be called. This is followed by a Nomenclature Design Sprint, which is a workshop. This is followed by a Validation Review, which is another meeting. This is followed by a Communication and Embedding Strategy, which is an email.
The entire process takes, on average, between seven and fourteen months per department, depending on what Mr Phelps describes as "the maturity of the organisation's receptivity to transformation."
"Some departments get it immediately," he says. "Others need more time to understand why this matters. That's fine. Change is a journey."
The Question of Cost
The Cabinet Office has declined to provide a precise figure for the total expenditure associated with Mr Phelps's work over the past eleven years, describing the costs as "within acceptable parameters" and noting that his salary sits within the standard Grade 7 pay band. This is true. What is also true is that each departmental title review requires the subsequent reprinting of staff directories, email signature blocks, internal phone lists, lanyard ID cards, door plaques, and, in one case, a recently installed departmental branding wall in the lobby of a building in Canary Wharf, which had to be updated following a consultation that concluded the word "Manager" carried "hierarchical connotations inconsistent with the department's collaborative culture."
The branding wall cost £34,000. The word it replaced was "Team Leaders."
A Freedom of Information request submitted by this publication seeking a full accounting of associated costs received a response confirming that the information was held, but that releasing it would require a review of which information was held, and that this review would be completed within the statutory timeframe of twenty working days, which expired four months ago.
Legacy and Reflection
As Mr Phelps approaches his twelfth year in post, there are signs that the appetite for his work may be shifting. A recent internal efficiency review — itself produced by a team whose members hold titles including Operational Value Realisation Analyst and Strategic Resource Optimisation Partner — noted that several departments had begun quietly reverting to simpler terminology in their external communications, finding that job boards received fewer applications when roles were described using language that candidates were unable to parse.
Mr Phelps is sanguine. "There will always be resistance to change," he says. "That's human nature. But I think if you ask people whether they'd rather be called an Assistant Manager or a Deputy Empowerment Lead, the answer is pretty clear."
We did, in fact, ask three civil servants this question. All three said Assistant Manager. One said she wasn't sure what empowerment meant in a government context. Another asked if this was related to a restructure.
Mr Phelps's role is currently listed on the Cabinet Office's internal staff directory under a category called Specialist Functions (People). It sits between a Psychological Safety Champion and someone whose title reads Transition Readiness Navigator, whose responsibilities, a spokesperson confirmed, are "currently being scoped."
