Working with Gen Z: A Handbook to Recruit, Retain, and Reimagine the Future Workforce after COVID-19

Foreword by Paul Allen, founder of Ancestry.com.

“An indispensable guide to unlocking the potential of the new generation.”—Johnny C. Taylor Jr., president and CEO, Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM)

A decade ago, Millennials came of age, and many workplaces were not prepared to integrate a new generation that thought and worked differently. As a result, some organizations lost out on the best in young talent or were paralyzed by generational infighting.

Gen Zers, born between 1995 and 2012, have had their lives and relationships with work shaped by massive instability—first as a result of the Great Recession and again by a global pandemic that changed everything.

This new generation holds the promise of the future and is coming soon—if it hasn’t already—to an office, inbox, Zoom, and Slack channel near you. To unlock that potential, employers and colleagues must understand them. Are you prepared?

In Working with Gen Z, leadership experts Santor Nishizaki and James DellaNeve provide a deeply researched picture of Gen Zers and their colleagues as they begin to contend with the difficulties of navigating the working world. Their findings include:

• What Gen Zers really want out of work
• What motivates them to do great work
• How you can keep them happy and engaged
• How to help them peacefully coexist with older generations

This book provides the tools, tips, and data to get ahead of the curve in understanding, recruiting, and retaining the top talent of the future.

Dr. Santor Nishizaki is the founder and CEO of Mulholland Consulting Group, whose mission is to help organizations increase generational awareness and create a happier workplace. His work on Millennials and Gen Z in the workplace has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, Psychology Today, the Boston Globe, Yahoo Finance, MSN.com, CNN.com, SHRM Blog, College Recruiter, and elsewhere. He also serves as a PhD professor of Global Leadership and Change at Pepperdine University and several universities in Southern California, where he has instructed hundreds of Gen Zers in leadership, diversity in the workplace, marketing, management, and entrepreneurship. His experience in the corporate world includes project management for Walt Disney Imagineering and supply chain management at a NASA center.

James DellaNeve is a systems architect at Boeing and a professor of organizational leadership. Over his thirty-eight-year corporate career, he has held high-level positions leading software deployment for $100+ million projects, forming new teams and departments, and defining organizational strategies and structures to work across multiple divisions. He has also taught qualitative and quantitative research methods and statistics for Pepperdine University’s Organizational Leadership Doctorate program for the past ten years.