Your digest

Keeping the promise today — and tomorrow

To keep our strategic plan, Keeping the Promise, relevant through the pandemic and beyond, we have reaffirmed our commitment to the five key focus areas, by creating an important supplement to this roadmap. As we move forward, we want to use our learnings from the past year and a half to specifically focus on three main parts of our business: automation and digitalization, future of work and enhancing products and services. While not new focus areas, the update to our strategic plan demonstrates their importance and how each has shifted slightly during the past 19 months. The donor experience, safety and our deep commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion continue to frame our ambitions for the ways we hope to work. We will move forward with great foresight, an emphasis on agility and with ongoing attention to resilience. Read more about our new areas of emphasis on Connect.

Quarterly performance report highlights increase in donor satisfaction and stem cell registrants

Each quarter, Canadian Blood Services’ strategy team tracks the organization’s advances in the key focus areas outlined in our 2019–2024 strategic plan. We use this information to help define and measure our work and to inform future decision-making. The team’s most recent report, which looks at performance in the first quarter of fiscal 2021 (April–June), highlights where we are performing well and where we might be falling short of our goals. Achievements worth noting include increased donor satisfaction targets and significant growth within our stem cell registry. Visit Connect to read more about our successes as well as areas we are currently monitoring.

Stepping up our game to better meet Canada's plasma needs

As more patients regularly need and receive plasma-derived products — especially immunoglobulin, which is used to treat various immune disorders, we have made expanding Canada's domestic plasma supply a key focus area. In August 2020, our Sudbury, Ont. donor centre became our first facility fully devoted to the collection of “source plasma” ― the straw-coloured component of blood that is the source material for lifesaving medications. By the start of this past summer, we opened two more plasma centres in Kelowna, B.C., and Lethbridge, Alta. Next year will see the opening of two new plasma centres in Ottawa and Brampton, Ont. While earlier this year, we announced plans to open a centre in Winnipeg, those plans had to be paused for now. In the meantime, work is underway to identify an alternate location in Canada for another plasma donor centre to ensure plasma sufficiency. Visit Connect to read about the recent stories behind the success of our plasma operations.

Question of the day: Will sites be assessed for air quality and ventilation to ensure all buildings are ready for when more people return?

We are constantly reviewing and optimizing our safety measures in our environments based on Public Health Agency of Canada recommendations with Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) being part of the Return to Office (RTO) phase two planning.

We have developed IAQ measures to assess and monitor ventilation, filtration, and air balancing. The implementation of RTO will include site by site assessment and alignment of occupancy to system’s capacity or application of additional measures to align to IAQ standards.

Additional measures may include increased ventilation, additional filtration and enhanced monitoring. Where buildings are leased, we will be working with landlords to measure and provide ventilation to align with guidelines.

At this time, we are working with consultants with a key focus on the administration areas at production sites. We are not aware of any air quality issues at our sites but are aware that industry guidelines may be in the process of changing as a result of the pandemic. We are identifying gaps and establishing plans to close the gaps over the next several months.

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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.     

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