In the recent years, human resource function has strived to reinvent itself through new visions, strategies, structures, processes and systems. However, to sustain the transformation of human resource functions, HR must develop and demonstrate new set of competencies to align themselves to the emerging roles. This article focuses on developing a better understanding of the HR roles and competencies associated with those roles for firms to create organizations of competitive advantage.

Competency refers to an individual’s ability to demonstrate knowledge, skills and abilities in the job. In other words, they are behaviorally-specific descriptions of the skills, knowledge and traits required by employees to perform their job effectively. Drawing an analogy from periodic table, the ‘atoms’ would constitute specific behaviors and several competency behaviors can be clustered together to form molecules or Competency Clusters like Leadership, People, Results, etc. Competencies required by HR professions typically get defined either through insights of senior managers or internal customers or through empirical research. Most of the firms adopt the former approach wherein HR professionals interview senior managers and put the expectations into specific clusters to develop a competency model.

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