The area of employment is changing dramatically, technology and globalization are impacting practices and experiences, and societies are becoming more global and multicultural. With the rise of globalization and the rapid changes in the business environment, employability is becoming one of the main goals for any organization. The organizational effectiveness lies in human resources quality and human resources development practices have the potential to improve employee competences. This study aims to examine the impact of human resource development practices on the employees' performance and organizational effectiveness at a sample of public universities in Iraq. A descriptive-analytical method based on one regression model was employed for data analyzing. The result indicates that HRD practices are significantly related to employee performance in the enhancement of organizational effectiveness. Also, the results show that there is a statistically significant relationship between employee performance and organizational effectiveness. Furthermore, this study recommends that the decisionmakers of universities should strive to develop HRD strategies which will enable them to improve employee competency and enhance the capability of the employees to achieve desired goals and objectives of the organization. This article contributes to human resource development, employee performance and organizational effectiveness literature. Also, this study provides key theoretical and practical implications which are discussed in detail.