Canadian Blood Services
COMMITMENT TO DIVERSITY
Canadian Blood Services’ commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) starts from within. We are dedicated to creating an organizational culture where employees and volunteers can bring their whole selves to work and engage and contribute in ways that are most meaningful to them. Through dedicated and robust DEI efforts, we seek to cultivate psychologically safe work environments, where organizational practices and policies reflect and embody the values of our employees, and where DEI is seen as a shared responsibility and critical priority across the organization. We know that commitments are meaningless without action, and we have undertaken and implemented many strategic initiatives to date, including:- hiring of a chief diversity officer, staffing of a dedicated DEI team and formation of an executive-sponsored and employee-led DEI council;
- establishment of several employee resource groups (ERGs) to provide safe spaces for staff who share common identities and empower them to contribute to the advancement of our organizational DEI goals. To date, we’ve established distinct ERGs for 2SLGBTQIA+ employees, BIPOC employees, employees with disabilities, and women/non-binary employees, each with an executive sponsor;
- working with a leading 2SGLBTQIA+ owned and operated consultancy firm to develop and implement an informed strategy to engage diverse community stakeholders as we prepare to welcome newly eligible donors to Canada’s Lifeline. This work has involved broad consultations with Pride organizations, queer, trans, two-spirit, HIV/AIDS and allied groups, as well as with Canadian Blood Services’ 2SLGBTQIA+ ERG;
- development and offering of in-depth training and education for employees on topics including allyship, sex-positive conversations, respectful pronoun use, 2SLBGTQIA+ inclusion, and more;
- undertaking work to make donor registration more inclusive for trans and non-binary donors; and
- the advancement of an inclusive hiring strategy to remove systemic barriers to hiring, recruitment and retention of employees from equity-deserving groups.
VISION FOR THE FUTURE
Canadian Blood Services’ vision is to help every patient, match every need and serve every Canadian. To fulfill this vision, we know we must embed diversity, equity and inclusion in everything that we do. We recognize that our future requires a significantly more diverse donor and registrant base in order to meet complex, evolving and underserved patient needs, as well as a workforce that more fully reflects Canada’s population. We are co-creating our vision for the future along with employees and stakeholders from 2SLGBTQIA+ and other equity-deserving communities and are continuing to take necessary steps to further evolve our practices and policies and address systemic discrimination within our organization.
"Canadian Blood Services is committed to strategic and sustainable diversity, equity and inclusion and Indigenization efforts — not only because it is the right thing to do, but because as a science- and evidence-based organization, we know that our actions will help us to save and enrich lives.
Building an inclusive workplace culture depends on more than just commitments. It requires leaders who are willing to do the hard work of understanding systemic inequities and discrimination and gaining the skills and knowledge required for transformative change. Canadian Blood Services’ executive team is dedicated to this work, and we are grateful to so many of our employees across the country ― our tireless internal advocates ― who continue to help drive forward necessary progress within our organization.
Canadian Blood Services is proud to be a partner of Pride at Work Canada. We recognize the importance of building focused internal policies and practices that generate measurable, positive outcomes for 2SLGBTQIA+ employees, and those from other and intersecting equity-deserving groups."
Dr. Graham Sher, O.C.
Chief Executive Officer
Canadian Blood Services