Data Validation cells referenced changed after Data is refreshed

I created a scorecard in excel that imports data for a data source. A dropdown list is on created of different employee names through Data Validation from this imported data. Most days everything is fine but if the data gets refreshed when there was an issue with the data, and no employee names appear in the data, the next time the data refreshes, the data validation will start at the end of the previous list.

For example, if there were previously 16 employees in the imported data, after the two data refreshes (a refresh without data and another refresh to correct the data) the data validation would start at A:17

For reference, here is what I’m using for my data validation:

=OFFSET('Data-Indiv'!$A$2,0,0,COUNTA('Data-Indiv'!$A:$A)-1)

After the issue, it would be changed to this automatically:

=OFFSET('Data-Indiv'!$A$17,0,0,COUNTA('Data-Indiv'!$A:$A)-1)

Before I tried the above solution, I also tried it with just referencing

='Data-Indiv'!$A$2:$A$1048576

but that did not work either.

This issue also seems to exist when a name is added earlier in the alphabet. For example, if Ashley was in A2 previously, but someone name Alicia is now in the data, the Data validation would start at A3, instead of the intended A2.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!