Reviewed by Sara Sanford
270 pages
Lauren Stiller Rikleen (ABA Publishing 2014)
Lauren Stiller Rikleen’s book, You Raised Us—Now Work with Us, seeks to demystify millennials and serve as a resource for baby boomers and generation Xers in interacting across age groups with the latest generation joining the workplace. The book is built on the author’s years of experience as a consultant and is broken into three parts.
Part one describes the primary views on how others perceive millennials and how millennials view work. Part two illustrates ways that traditional workplace environments help feed these perceptions of millennials. Part three suggests adaptations to the workplace that will increase the likelihood of working effectively with millennials, as well as providing career advice to millennials. Throughout all three parts, Stiller Rikleen intersperses existing research with independent data from a survey she conducted.
The author addresses how millennials perceive work, having started their careers in the midst of an economic crisis. She provides practical advice to older generations about working with millennials and to millennials to help them find greater success at work through understanding workplace traditions. The book concludes with suggestions for change in the workplace to improve cross-generational collaboration. If past is prologue, the author asserts, millennials will help make workplaces more flexible, transparent, and respectful of work/family balance—to the benefit of us all.