The next generation of workers is here.  

Meet Generation Z—today’s early talent and the workforce of tomorrow. By 2025, they’ll constitute over a quarter of your team. And along the way, they’ve had unique experiences driven by technology, global events, and movements for widespread change. 

The experiences Gen Z continues to face will create a unique set of assets, liabilities, and needs for this population in the workplace. 

To complicate things further, a significant cohort of today’s early talent face systemic barriers to career and economic success. Future jobs will depend on these talented individuals, and thoughtful, inclusive—while practical—solutions will be needed. 

Employers know that they must find ways to include and respond to this new generation in order to fulfill organizational needs. Through Jobs for the Future’s (JFF) work with dozens of Impact Employers, we’ve seen firsthand the challenge human resource leaders face in prioritizing one worker population without neglecting others.  

What can companies do? 

While companies increasingly recognize the importance of a dedicated early talent strategy, there’s little research on what works for today’s early talent. And employers already struggle to adequately track, segment, and provide targeted engagement to their employees. 

To help companies navigate this challenge, JFF underwent an effort to better understand this specific worker population and identify concrete, practical ways that employers can support their early talent’s engagement, development, and advancement at work—specifically those who face systemic barriers to advancement. 

As part of this work, we are excited to release three new resources to help employers understand and respond to their early talent’s characteristics, reinforcing and sustaining their commitment to inclusive talent practices. 

Download JFF’s new resources focused on early talent: 

• Five Ways Impact Employers Can Unlock the Power of Gen Z, an actionable guide to help Impact Employers customize their existing practices to more easily and more successfully attract, develop, and engage their early talent. 
• Advancing Our Future: A Strategy Playbook for Frontline Career Advancement of Early Talent, a playbook to help employers reimagine advancement opportunities for early talent in frontline roles. 
• Turning Challenge Into Opportunity: A Corporate Blueprint for Navigating the Gen Z Workforce Transition, a practical guide to help employers seamlessly integrate Gen Z talent into their workplaces.

The work to support and integrate the incoming generation at work is just beginning, and these resources only scratch the surface. If you are interested in getting involved in this work and would like to learn more, please contact: employermobilization@jff.org.