During this second week, I worked remotely on the tasks I was assigned during my organization’s Operations, Infrastructure, and Culture Board meeting that was held last week. The board members and I were tasked with refining and adding on to a list that we created which describes the values and culture of Zora’s House, along with looking through the organization’s employee manual to assess the extent to which their manual aligns and represents their values. As someone who has not been involved previously with Zora’s House, I felt a little weird trying to refine and add to their list of values because I only became involved with the organization through the fellowship. However, in the board meeting and throughout the week, my supervisor and the board members have made me feel like an important part of the organization and that my input also held value. This in itself was a display of the organization’s values and culture, which made it a bit easier to do this particular task. 

In moving towards figuring out to what extent the employee handbook aligned with the organization’s values, I began to see how difficult it is to translate values into a document that will be a representation of the organization to its employees. Some of the values and themes that came up in our board meeting came out of collective and individual experiences, feelings, and emotions that the board members had when thinking about Zora’s House and their involvement as participants. Those emotions and experiences, which are so important in order to understand why Zora’s House is focused on providing a space where women of color can thrive, can’t all be included or expressed in an employee manual. 

Even when thinking about how aligned their current manual is with their values generally, I saw how some values like intentional rest can be expressed relatively easily with certain policies, while values like authenticity and vision might not necessarily translate as well into a document that is mostly about outlining expectations, rules, procedures, etc. that employees need to be aware of. Although some things do get “lost in translation,” I think these tasks are giving me the opportunity to explore better ways of operationalizing something intangible like culture into something concrete that captures something in a more holistic way. I’m excited to continue this process and see how the organization’s employee and operations manuals further evolve to better express Zora’s House’s goals and mission to its workers and members.