Your digest

August 13, 2021

We want to make it easy for employees to access the latest from Canadian Blood Services.  Every Tuesday and Friday, we will be bringing you important COVID-19 updates along with valuable information and inspiring stories about other parts of our operations.

We know things are rapidly changing; please remember you can always reach out to communications@blood.ca with your questions and suggestions on how we can better help employees.

Here is the latest.

See past digests

Sikh Nation partners with us to encourage plasma donation

Sikh Nation is an active, engaged team of blood donors and the largest contributor to our pledge-based Partners for Life program. Approximately 60 per cent of its annual donations are made during their November campaign and over the years, the group’s efforts have helped save over 150,000 lives. Recently, Sikh Nation stepped forward in Sudbury, Ont. to organize their first group plasma donation event and to encourage the community to join them as plasma donors and help meet the growing demand in Canada. CTV News visited our plasma collection centre in Sudbury to speak with some of the generous donors from Sikh Nation who are helping to raise awareness about the importance of plasma donation. Watch the CTV News report here.

Sign up for live learning sessions and become a Microsoft 365 pro

Did you know that we offer Microsoft 365 live learning sessions on your favourite productivity and collaboration apps? You can sign up for live Teams-based sessions explaining and demonstrating Microsoft 365 apps such as Outlook, Teams and SharePoint or request a custom training session for your team. Whether you’d like to get more familiar with the basics or are looking to learn about advanced features like polls, webinars and breakout rooms, there’s a session perfect for you. Visit Connect to browse upcoming live learning sessions and register for courses, including:

  • Aug.17 – Sharing PowerPoint in Teams
  • Aug.17 – Webinars with Teams
  • Aug.18 – IT essentials
  • Aug.19 – Managing Teams meetings
  • Aug.24 – Outlook tips and tricks

Keep your eyes on the digest this month for more answers to your town hall questions

Every month during our live town halls, Graham and our panel of experts do their best to respond to as many of your questions as possible. Unfortunately, the allotted time isn’t always enough to provide answers to all the thought-provoking questions received.

During our most recent townhall on Aug.10, we received a record number of questions from employees — so, for the remainder of the month, we’re dedicating our ‘Question of the day’ section in Your digest to providing responses to your outstanding town hall submissions. Keep your eyes on this space in August for questions that were unanswered during the live event, and continue to submit your questions to communications@blood.ca.

Missed the live town hall earlier this week? You can now access the recording of the event on our COVID-19 employee portal.

Question of the day: Closed and limited borders have created extremely long waits not only for products being imported, but for vendors that must travel internationally to provide services. From a Facilities standpoint, we have seen extraordinarily long wait times on materials needed to maintain our centres. Could we explore purchasing Canadian-made products and employing Canadian-based companies to provide services at our centres?

We do not have a specific “buy Canadian” policy as a result of the pandemic supply issues. We work with the business to understand the requirements, and we look for Canadian suppliers and manufacturers where and when possible in sourcing products.

It is important to understand that even though a product is made in Canada, or a vendor is located in Canada, this does not guarantee availability in constrained markets.  It’s also a balance of overall cost vs security of supply options.   

For some of the critical products and services that we currently source outside of Canada, we will need longer term strategies to develop a domestic supply chain. In the shorter term, we have secured Canadian supply on our critical and business essential supplies where possible. 

As an example, Oliberte produce our main masks in Canada. While we do keep Canada foremost in our minds, we inescapably need to go with who has the availability and pricing to keep operations going. 

Diversity, equity and inclusion resources to help you become a better ally

 

About your digest

This digest highlights the latest policy and employee support measures, resources to help you manage our new reality and original content like articles and videos to remind us that what we do matters.  No access to email? No problem — all this information and more can be found on blood.ca/employees from any device, no login required.     

Click here to read past editions of your digest. 

Have questions? Check out blood.ca/employees or email us at communications@blood.ca