• Identify performance criteria to improve the accuracy and ease of the hiring and selection process • Clarify standards of excellence for easier communication of performance expectations to direct reports • Provide a clear foundation for dialogue to occur between the manager and employee about performance, development and career-related issues.

• Identify the success criteria (i.e. behavioral standards of performance excellence) required to be successful in their role. • Support a more specific and objective assessment of their strengths and specify targeted areas for professional development. • Provide development tools and methods for enhancing their skills.

• Competencies sets clear behavioral expectations • Provides employees with clear direction on how they can contribute • Reinforces behaviors that are consistent with the organization’s mission, culture and priorities • Competencies can help identify training and development actions • Provides employees with a roadmap for building strengths and closing development gaps • Ties to career growth and becomes a “learning organization”
• Competencies can help integrate HR programs •  Improves consistency in recruiting and selection, training, performance management and work/succession planning •  Streamlines and simplifies HR operations

• Define the knowledge’s, skills, abilities, and other traits, that is, the competencies needed by the HR professional • Establish the framework for building a performance-oriented and mission-driven HR organization • Redefine the role of the HR organization • Identify and incorporate the best practices from private and public sector HR organizations into the design • Establish a framework for internal strategic and workforce planning for HR • Define competencies for a variety of organizationally-based positions and roles.

The term 'competence' defines as measurable behavior, specifically ‘any measurable behavior required by an organization, job or position that a person may demonstrate in the work context'. So, a competence can be:
• a piece of knowledge (such as the names of all the rivers in China) • a skill (such as an interpersonal skill, widget turning, soldering a joint) • an attitude (such as a proactive approach to work) • an attribute (such as absence of color blindness or perfect pitch)
Competency development is one of the hottest topics in the HR profession.