The paper aims to investigate the influence of particular human resource management (HRM) roles on the process of achieving different types of sustainable competitive advantage (SCA). We create an empirical model including two parts for testing relationships such as competence-based HRM roles – SCA dimensions, and competence-based HRM. Using survey data from 227 European companies, this study explores how SCA dimensions may be developed through HRM. We argue that to achieve SCA, a company needs to develop competence-based HRM related to identifying and describing core competences. This study advocates that SCA could be assessed by evaluation of the level of development of different competence-based management functions. We prove that competence-based HRM is strongly related to competence management in an organisation and contributes to SCA development.