The formulation and facilitation of workforce management practices that humanely help employees to deliver on organizational commitments to customers has primarily become a function of the human resources management professionals or those supervisors who independently perform human resource management activities. A consequence of the growth and diversity of those who operate Human Resources ("HR") roles has been their tendency toward fomenting proprietary and complicated solutions to management concerns where simplicity and consistency were warranted. Standardization is seen as a remedy to the bureaucratic inefficiencies that emerge from activities where self-conscious risk aversion can often overwhelm the flexibility needed in the modern marketplace.

ISO/TC 260 has the following general objectives to develop international standards that are congruent with the scope of the Committee, which are:

Standardization in the field of human resource management.
To develop standards that stay current and evolve as the human resource management evolves;
To develop standards that make the best possible use of available evidence based research;
To be vigilant in harmonizing standards for similar types of HRM products and services;
To continue to ensure that the make-up of working groups is balanced and includes the best experts as well as representation from all stakeholders; and,
To ensure that vested interests never dictate the development of human resource management standards.