Nino Žganec started working as a junior researcher at the Social Work Study Centre, Faculty of Law in Zagreb in 1991. Since the beginning of his work, he has specialized in the field of organizing and developing the local community. As part of his work in this field, he participated in the work of several scientific research projects in the field of social work and social policy. During the 1990s, he was actively involved in various professional projects aimed at helping children victims of war, as well as in research related to the psychosocial consequences of war on children. He is actively involved in co-operation with a large number of domestic and international non-governmental organizations that implemented psychosocial assistance projects for war victims in the Republic of Croatia. Since 1991, he has been continuously participating in teaching several different courses at the Faculty of Law in Zagreb, Social Work Study Centre. In addition to the core field of social work in the community, he designed and introduced the courses Ethics of Social Work, Social Work in the Social Welfare System, International Social Work and Social Work and Human Rights into the educational program of the Social Work Study. During his undergraduate and graduate studies, he taught the course Social-Legal Foundations in the Education and Rehabilitation of Visually Impaired Persons at the Faculty of Education and Rehabilitation of the University of Zagreb, and the course Contemporary Theoretical Approaches in Social Work at the Department of Social Work of the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Mostar. Dozens of students have graduated under his mentorship, and he was also a mentor in the process of creating master’s and doctoral theses. During his scientific and teaching work, as a lecturer or as a guest lecturer, he participates in the delivery of courses at the postgraduate and doctoral studies at the Faculty of Law, Social Work Study Centre in Zagreb, the Faculty of Educational Rehabilitation and Medicine at the University of Zagreb, the Faculty of Political Science at the University of Sarajevo, and the European Comparative postgraduate studies in social sciences organized by Zuyd University Maastricht and London Metropolitan University.

He is the founder and one of the leaders of the summer school “Social Work and Community Development”, which takes place in the co-organization of the Social Work Study Centre and the Center for Civil Initiatives from Zagreb. So far, he has published dozens of scientific and professional works in the field of theory and methods of social work. He is the author or editor of several books in the field of theory and methods of social work. He participated in more than a hundred different international and domestic scientific and professional meetings where he gave a large number of presentations and was an invited plenary lecturer. On short study stays, he was in most European countries, as well as in the USA and Canada. He is a member of several domestic and international professional organizations. He actively speaks German and English. He is the father of two children. As an external collaborator, he participates in the projects of training helpers for the needs of various non-governmental organizations. He was the founder and first president of the non-governmental organization Sociativa Nova, which deals with the development of social services. He held various management positions in public institutions and civil society organizations. He is one of the directors of the course within the social work programme at the Interuniversity Center in Dubrovnik. Since the beginning of his professional career, he has participated in the work of numerous national and international commissions and expert commissions, mainly related to the field of social work, social welfare and social policy. In the period from 2000-2005,  he held the positions of assistant minister and state secretary in charge of the social welfare system, and during the performance of these duties he conceived the reform of the social welfare system. He has developed a wide network of contacts with representatives of various domestic and international governmental and non-governmental organizations and higher education institutions. Since 2011, he has been a member of the Executive Board of the European Association of Schools of Social Work. In the period from 2015-2019 he held the position of president of the European Association of Schools of Social Work and vice president of the International Association of Schools of Social Work. From 2014-2020, he held the position of president of the Croatian Anti-Poverty Network. In 2023, he was elected to the position of a full professor with tenure in the scientific field of social work, the scientific branch of theories of social work.