The traditional employment contract centered on tangible benefits (salary, job security, and linear career progression) is no longer sufficient. As life expectancy rises and technological disruption accelerates, organisations must rebalance their value proposition to include intangible assets: the skills, vitality, and adaptability employees need to thrive across 50-60 year careers.

Drawing on research from “The 100-Year Life” by Professor Lynda Gratton and Andrew Scott, the report identifies three critical asset categories:

1. Productivity Assets: Building the capacity to learn continuously, upgrading skill-sets, and investing in productive peer relationships. This includes developing foresight to anticipate which skills will be needed as technology renders current capabilities obsolete. By 2020, 35% of skills considered important today will have changed.

2. Vitality Assets: Remaining energetic, socially connected, and psychologically healthy across a longer working life. This encompasses both strong ties (family, close friends) and weak ties (community connections) that provide support and opportunities for transformation.

3. Transformation Assets: Building self-awareness, diverse networks, and the flexibility to change careers, identities, or roles multiple times throughout an extended career.

The future belongs to organisations that recognise intangible assets as equal partners to financial compensation - building workforces that are not just employed, but genuinely employable across decades of change.