DETROIT, Mich - Congratulations to Paul Roy, IT Manager at WDIV Channel 4 news for receiving the ESGR Patriot Award.
Roy was nominated by Spc. Jordan T. Newman of the Army National Guard. He is an IT Specialist at WDIV Channel 4. Newman stated, “I started working for WDIV as an IT specialist November 2021, and I was informed I was deploying within my first two weeks of starting the job. I was dreading telling my brand-new boss that he was about to lose me for a year, so I walked into his office and told him, ‘I understand that this is not pleasant, and I get it if there are issues.’
There was no hesitation in Paul when he told me that anything I needed would be taken care of – ‘any time off will be covered, there will be a temp worker put in place that will only be here until you return so you will come straight back into your old role. You have our full support. You have enough to worry about with all this going on – don’t worry about your position here.’
Paul wasn’t even fully aware of the USERRA regulations yet – he knew there were some laws in place, but he (and his boss, Amador Velasquez) didn’t need to know what their rules were. They put a plan in place to go above and beyond basically immediately, without hesitation, and have never held it over my head or made me feel I was inconveniencing them.
They never even made a big deal about it outside of to say, ‘These are the plans we have for 2022, but we may have to adjust some of them since you’ll be gone when we were planning on doing this.’ There are some workplace training opportunities I will be missing while on deployment, and Paul has been searching for ways to get me that same training on my return so I’m not behind the others on my team in regards to skillset.
Overall, Paul Roy, Amador Velasquez, and WDIV have been extremely accommodating, especially given my short tenure, and have made every effort to make sure that I’m still included in any planning, training, and work.”
Thank you to Roy, Velasquez and WDIV for your support of our Service Members.
Presenting the award is southeast volunteer Fred Kaiser.
Pictured from left: Paul Roy, Supervisor; Spc. Jordan T. Newman, ARNG & IT Specialist, WDIV; Fred Kaiser, ESGR Volunteer