Can you believe it? Human Resources has not been fully staffed since June 2020. At times, we were down three people out of a seven-person team. This has made for some challenging times.

On Monday, Sept. 27, we were thrilled to have Trevon Smith join the HR team. We now have a full bench—we even have a student employee! Exciting times for us and we hope this will mean quicker response times, increased training opportunities, updated processes, and greater service for you when you need HR assistance or have a question for us.

Trevon joins us in a new role—HR Generalist. Trevon joins us from the insurance world and has a wealth of HR experience. He’s a certified HR professional, has an extensive background in benefits and disability, and he is delightful.

We will be positioning Trevon as our “go to” HR professional to help employees with HR questions. He’ll be able to assist with common questions, triage inquiries when volume is high, and redirect more complex and time-consuming matters to the right subject matter experts. We want to give Trevon a few weeks to settle into the new role. Then, we will share with campus details about a new HR customer service model—which we think will better serve you in many ways.

As you may recall, Teresa Downs joined our team last month and she really hit the ground running. With a focus on data, she’ll often be behind the scenes, but she will be helping us with workflow and our internal processes. Her work will have a direct impact on our ability to quickly and efficiently serve Drake employees.

Anthony Leto has been moved into a Talent Acquisition role and we definitely have our work cut out for us there. The recruitment space right now is both challenging and unpredictable. You may see us trying out new tactics to more proactively attracts candidates. We will work on long-term strategies, but we, like many other employers, are facing unique challenges in attracting good candidates right now. With certain positions, this has not been an issue. With other positions, it’s been tough. We will now have more dedicated time to attend to both short- and long-term recruitment practices.

While we have a long list of projects to tackle, we are thrilled to have the key pieces in place. Thank you for your support and patience. More to come later this month about our new customer service model.

— Maureen De Armond, Human Resources