Your Digest

Next live town hall is on Wednesday, May 10, 1–2:00 p.m. ET

Please submit your questions for our CEO, Dr. Graham Sher, for the upcoming employee town hall. Questions can be submitted in advance by sending them to communications@blood.ca. Check your calendar invite for this event for information about how to submit questions anonymously. You can also ask your question live at the town hall. We will try to get to as many questions as possible and look forward to another great discussion. Please note: if you cannot make it to the live event, it will be recorded and shared on Connect in the days following.

Celebrating the impact of our Brand Ambassador Network

The annual Brand Ambassador Network Impact Report is now available. The Impact Report showcases how our Ambassadors have helped bring our brand to life throughout 2022-2023. It was another successful year as the network made even more connections, engaged more with our brand and furthered their professional development. Thank you to our Brand Ambassadors for their unwavering commitment to our brand and the patients we serve. Read more on Connect.

National Volunteer Week is underway

Volunteers are an integral part of Canadian Blood Services. They shine in so many ways: from supporting blood and plasma donors at appointments, to recruiting potential stem cell donors and choosing to register to be an organ and tissue donor, to organizing and growing Partners for Life teams of all sizes. In recognition of National Volunteer Week – which runs from April 16 to 22 – we are sharing stories of some of our amazing volunteers. Read more at blood.ca. During National Volunteer Week, employees are encouraged to celebrate the volunteers who work tirelessly across Canada’s Lifeline to ensure that patients receive blood, plasma, stem cells, and organs and tissues when they need them most. What volunteers do matters. Please be sure to thank them for their support.

Correction from April 14: Last week’s Your Questions Answered incorrectly stated using VPN was required to access EDA and MEDA. You can access EDA and MEDA without signing into VPN. Below is an updated version of the question and answer.

Your Questions Answered

Should I always be signing into VPN when I’m working from home or only when I need to connect to certain apps like EDA?

If you are using Office 365 and other web-based resources, such as SharePoint, Connect or Teams, you do not need to connect to the Canadian Blood Services virtual private network (VPN) on a daily basis. If you need to access our internal resources such as Eprogesa, then you will need to sign in using our VPN. You can access EDA and MEDA without signing into VPN.

However, we do encourage you to connect to our VPN a couple of days per month to make sure that your system receives any application, operating system and security updates. A good rule of thumb is to set calendar dates to sign in, such as the first and third Mondays of every month. This will give your devices the best chance to remain up to date.

Also, if you are working remotely and you must use public WiFi, please use your VPN to securely access your work files.