Is it possible to reference a text cell, but without the format?

IF cell A1 contains "Name" and cell B1 = A1, I'd like B1 to also contain "Name"... however, I'd like to format B1's text to be different from A1.

I'm on macOS Big Sur Version 11.7.7; Numbers version 12.1;

It seems to me that in prior versions, when you referenced a text cell, that the formatting of the referenced cell either did not pass to the new cell OR you were at least able to change the formatting on the new cell. However, at some point it seems now that when a text cell is referenced, it passes along the formatting and thus far I can't figure out how to change it.

Why do I want this? My use case is that I have a numbers document that is a template for each employee I have. I would like to enter the employee's name once in the document and throughout the document I can reference that one cell and have their name be displayed in many other places for other formulas to work, as well as for it to look nice. Over the past few years I've developed my own little system to format the text color of a cell a particular color (blue), to visually guide the user to cells that should be changed. All other font color is black. So, it is encouraged to change blue text (A1), but do not change black text (B1).

This has worked well for many, many years. However, over the past year or two, something changed in Numbers and it seems to now pass along the text formatting when referencing a another text cell. So before, it was easy to see that the cell with the blue text is the cell to enter the new employee's name. Now, the employee's name is blue everywhere throughout the document and you essentially need to click on the cell to see if it is a reference or if it in fact is the cell you should change.

After I've referenced the cell, I've tried to then tried to go around the document and format the other cells. It seems the referenced format overrides all other cells. I've also tried to format the entire column or row in which the reference text is displayed: every other cell will change, but not the referenced text...it again continues to be displayed exactly as it does in the original cell (A1).

Please let me know if there is a way to reference the text content from one cell to another without the formatting of the original text.

Thanks in advance!!