Practitioners and academics agree that Human Resources (HR) must be strategic to be relevant. For better or worse, most Human Resources practices have remained at a transactional rather than a strategic level in most Asian organizations. Benchmarking the HR best practices of leading organizations is a strategy that will enable an organization’s human capital to create value for keeping it competitive.

While benchmarking supports organizations to make HR processes and practices more efficient, in a globalized world where organizations face increasing change and competition, there is a need to look beyond just best practices benchmarking. While we may look for static best practices in recruitment and selection, training and development, compensation and benefits, talent management and performance management, there is a need to look for dynamic best practices ‘to think about making a fundamental transformation of the core business activity,’ says Jon Sullivan, former Chief Talent Officer of Agilent Technologies. Best practices are not just about metrics and imitation of others.