It seems the NDP has quietly hit the refresh button.

A large number of senior employees at NDP headquarters and in the NDP leaders’ office have already changed-up. And elections to the party’s executive next weekend are guaranteed to bring more change.

Party veterans Anne McGrath and Brad Lavigne – the NDP’s national director and the campaign’s senior communications advisor, respectively – have both moved on, as was widely expected and reported.

But in addition to McGrath and Lavigne, Mulcair’s pre-election chief of staff and four directors in his office – outreach, communications, organization and operations – have moved on.

And over at NDP headquarters, two key directors – digital campaigns and organization – have been replaced. Long-time party activist Karl Belanger has been hired by the party as its national director, replacing McGrath.

“It’s a younger group” said a party source who did not want to be named. “It’s almost a generational change.”

Belanger, the new NDP national director, grew up in Quebec City, has twice been a candidate and was president of the federal party’s youth wing in the 1990s. He served as a spokesperson for former leader Alexa McDonough and then worked with Jack Layton.

Working with Belanger at party office are a new digital director and director of organization. Both younger women in jobs previously held by men, the two new directors are heading in different directions than their predecessors, perhaps as much a matter of strategic necessity as personal style. In digital campaigning, the party has moved more deeply into issue-based engagement. In organization, the party is taking a more regional and street-level approach.

New to Mulcair’s office as chief of staff is campaign veteran Ray Guardia. Most recently, Guardia worked with Projet Montreal, the official opposition party in Montreal municipal politics. Guardia was manager of Brian Topp’s 2012 leadership bid and director of the NDP’s Quebec campaign in 2011.

Joining Guardia are a new director of organization, new communications director and new deputy chief of staff. Two started out as local campaign staff workers, the third worked in the student movement before joining the NDP’s Parliamentary staff and moving into the new position.

Pro-Mulcair party activists point to Guardia’s new role as a sign Mulcair is moving beyond old leadership loyalties and divisions to integrate different elements of the party. Indeed, the party’s new director of communications was the manager of Peggy Nash’s leadership bid.

The NDP refresh will continue at next weekend’s convention where the top two party positions will be contested. Neither incumbent party president Rebecca Blakie nor current vice-president Brigitte Sansoucy will seek re-election. Sansoucy was elected as MP for Saint-Hyacinthe-Bagot in the recent federal election.

The campaigns to fill these party top positions echo the larger debate about the leadership of Tom Mulcair.

Barry Weisleder would have to be considered a long-shot for the party presidency. A vocal critic of Tom Mulcair – and most previous NDP leaders – Weisleder was thrown out of the NDP in the 1990s for campaigning against the party.

Running against Weisleder is Marit Stiles, a Toronto school board trustee and former riding association president and labour movement staffer. Stiles is well-known as a media commentator for the NDP.

A similar race is playing out for vice-president. Hans Marotte, a Montreal lawyer, former candidate and anti-poverty activist, is seeking election as vice-president. He is challenged by Alain Charbonneau, who is running on a slate with Weisleder’s slate and has also been a pointed critic of Mulcair.