Tomorrow's Worth
Introduction
There is a widening gap between the millennial generation and their baby boomer parents. The Intergenerational Centre reports that millennials are pessimistic about their chances of improving on their parents' lives, while the burden for future increases in social care spending on baby boomers is currently set to fall mainly on the younger generations of working age.
Tomorrow’s Worth was a project set up by WCoMC in late 2019 to identify practical action that could be taken to address the issues of intergenerational inequality. It was inspired by Lord David Willetts, President of the Advisory Council and Intergenerational Centre of the Resolution Foundation, who delivered the Company’s annual Change Lecture in 2019.
He has written in a report, "We have shown that generational progress has indeed stalled. Moreover, we face significant challenges in providing the health and care that older generations expect,’ and continued, If the evidence is so powerful then that means there is an obligation to act.’ The report concluded that intergenerational rebalancing will require increased taxation of the elderly and wealthy cohorts in society and increased spending on both care and young people.
The project concept
As management consultants, members of our Company constitute a considerable body of knowledge of how to introduce and successfully implement massive change. More broadly, the Company can function as a link between the financial interests of the City, of which it is an integral part, and the consulting industry.
This Change Lecture was therefore conceived as a launch event for a project in which the Company might engage its knowhow and connections to consider original and viable approaches to addressing the challenge of intergenerational inequality.
The Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) was engaged as an active partner in this, seeing the project of value, not only in itself, but also as a means of engaging with its membership and creating an impact. The expectation was that other organisations might also join in sponsoring the project in due course.
The project was expected to be completed by the end of 2020, culminating in a report. In the meantime the execution of the project itself was expected to provide benefits to all those engaged, through a supporting programme of activities and events, accompanied by appropriate publicity.
Progress
Following the Change Lecture, those who expressed interest met at a couple of project definition workshops to explore where to focus their efforts. The conclusion was with three initial projects, which focus on issues of intergenerational inequality in the workplace:
- Improving intergenerational collaboration in the workplace
- Providing the HR department with the language and tools to address intergenerational issues
- Intergenerational knowledge transfer
We imagined that other projects may follow on, with the aim is of having useful deliverables by the end of 2020 for all projects.
Conclusion
Within a very short time of the project’s launch, the world was of course gripped by the COVID 19 pandemic and the severe restrictions that were put in place to contain the spread of infection.
This prompted a review of priorities and inspired the launch of a new project, Securing Future Prosperity. This was directed to harnessing the considerable talent of those involved with the livery movement and deploying this to support those businesses, particularly involving millennials, who were adversely affected by the impact of COVID. This project was launched in mid-2020 and you can find out more about it and its progress at by following this link.
As for Tomorrow’s Worth, we have for the time being drawn a line under this. The challenges of inter-generational equality remain and indeed at the time of writing (Autumn 2022) have been exacerbated by the current economic circumstances. However, the Company does not have the capacity to pursue Tomorrow’s Worth per se at this time, but may well return to it at some time in the future.