IFF will begin conducting telephone interviews with 13,500 employers across the UK this month to examine how they make the most of their available “human capital”.

The new Employer Perspectives study, which will run every two years, replaces existing research programmes run by the Commission for Employment and Skills and other public sector agencies.

IFF has also been appointed to redevelop the National Employer Skills Survey, which focuses on employers’ experience of skills deficiencies and recruitment issues. The survey will go live in 2011.

Jan Shury (pictured), IFF’s joint managing director said: “The challenge for this new research series is to make business support more straightforward. It is all about simplifying the process by which employers engage with the jobs market, by examining both the recruitment challenges their own business faces and their experience of external support systems. It is crucial that the CES can identify barriers to employment and growth, and these biennial UK-wide studies will help them to do this.”

• In other IFF news, the agency has promoted associate director Katie Oldfield and head of data processing Rob Irving to board directors and research executives Peter Hall, Catherine Riley and Gill Stewart to project managers.