Businesses’ biggest assets are their workers and they need to be nurtured, 100 professionals heard at a conference.

The invitation-only event drew together more than 100 senior personnel professionals, business owners and managers from across the island to hear talks from speakers from all over Britain.

These included specialists in mental health in the work place, the Isle of Man Equality Act, the new ’pensions freedoms’ and global employee-mobility awareness. The event also featured talks from new technology companies about bringing digital services to the workplace and a presentation from human performance training consultants, who look after polar explorers and Olympic cyclists and TT motorcycle racers.

It was organised by MAC Group, which is based on Athol Street in Douglas and describes itself as an ’employee benefits consultancy’.

A company spokesman said: ’The event was a tremendous success with attendees commenting that it was great to see a more modern way of thinking around employee benefits and enjoying the networking opportunities offered.’

As was observed during the conference, millennials (born 1981 to 1996) will occupy 75% of the workforce by 2025.

MAC says that their ’different outlook on work and life’, combined with the increasing awareness of how stress affects the workforce and an overall concern regarding saving for retirement, means employers need to realise they must review and update their current employee benefits approach to accommodate changing expectations and requirements.

Jon McGowan, the chief executive of the MAC Group, said: ’We hope that our event provided support, information and inspiration to all those who attended.

’We have reached a point where the attitude towards employees has definitely shifted and employers everywhere are starting to realise that your people are, without doubt, your most important business asset, so it was important for us to focus on employee wellbeing for this first conference.’

The conference was held at the Comis hotel at Mount Murray and MAC is planning another.