I think you could also do the following:
Create an array of employee objects from the collection of employees.
Write a custom ListCellRenderer that extracts the display string from the object and passes it to the default superclass' renderer. Call JList.setCellRenderer and pass it an instance of your renderer.
The nice thing about this is that, if I'm not mistaken, getSelectedValue() will return the employee object itself; there is no need to look up the object by the displayed name.
- Keith