New Faces for Summer

Its been an interesting Spring in HR and promises to be an even more interesting Summer. We started off with an unexpectedly early maternity leave, followed by an expected and amicable resignation, followed by hiring a new staff member, and soon to be followed by a leave of absence before everyone comes back to work full-time in late July or early August. Since there are new faces, and some old faces in new places, here's an update on who's doing what in HR for the summer.

First the easy stuff: Jack Leichty is still covering general HR issues as my #2 as well as leaves of absence, HR support for Service and Operations, the News Flash, and of course those all-important and ever-popular Lost and Found emails.


NO PICTURE Jack

Kristie Cantrell still carries the majority of our recruiting load, handling all postings and recruiting for all parts of the company except Service and Operations and Live Events:

NO PICTURE Kristie

From here down the fun starts. Amy Lindsey, who is in charge of payroll, compensation, and benefits is on maternity leave and is anticipated to return Monday, July 23rd. She and new son Eliot, "Little E", are doing fine.

NO PICTURE Amy

In her absence payroll and most administrative duties related to benefits are being covered very ably by Elaine Williams, who joined us last July to back-fill Amy's promotion. Olivia is backing up Elaine in Amy's place and our payroll accuracy hasn't slipped an inch under Elaine's stewardship.


NO PICTURE Elaine

Benefits questions from employees, and maintenance of our benefits eligibility records is temporarily falling to Olivia Golchi, who will leave us Friday, July 20th to attend graduate school. While most "short-timers" mentally check out early, Olivia has stepped up to more responsibility and will be sorely missed.


NO PICTURE Olivia

With Olivia's planned departure we needed to find a quality individual to fill her usual position. After a long search Lexi Winslow started work for us this past Monday having just finished her business degree at UT Knoxville. Even though she's fresh out of school, her Mom is a career HR professional so Lexi, like my own daughter, was born into this business and comes in with a solid understanding of our profession.













Lexi



To round out our Summer of Musical Chairs, Dawn Stanton (my Assistant and department Den Mother) will take a leave of absence starting around June 7th and lasting until approximately July 23rd. We know from her maternity leave three years ago that the department runs better when I'm gone rather than when Dawn's out, so this will be quite a hole to fill for 4-6 weeks.

NO PICTURE Dawn



While she's out on leave her chair will be covered by Angela Thurmond, who temped with us recently working on the Live Events compensation project. We were impressed and asked her to fill in for Dawn while she's out of commission.











Angela










So it's going to be a summer where three of our six staff positions will be filled by one temporary, one new hire, and one staff member playing out of position. However, these are all quality individuals who have my confidence. We should be back to full strength by July 23rd, so I'm delaying most of my vacation time until after the first of August. If you need anything from our department and don't get it, please contact me directly and we'll take care of you as we always do. Meanwhile, if you get a chance, drop by and introduce yourself and welcome Lexi to Thomas Nelson.



Jim

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