Trakstar’s Best of 2022: What People Read, Listened To, and Used

Every year, we create a ton of interesting content that people read, listen to, and use in their careers – and 2022 was no different. It’s always interesting to see what people care about – and it helps us create better products and services to help with talent development and management.
This year, some of our top blogs, podcasts, whitepapers, webinars, and free downloads surprised us.
Take a look below to see what people were researching in 2022.

Blogs

Of everything we put out into the world, our blogs are the most popular pages on our website. We work extremely hard to ensure they provide visitors with valuable information, realistic tips, and practical advice you can use in your career.

Some blogs are far more popular than others, and these are the ones that stood out this year:

How to Handle a Successful Employee with a Bad Attitude

You have an extremely successful employee, but they have a bad attitude. What do you do? In this blog, we break down the steps you can take to evaluate an employee’s behavior and take steps to rectify the situation. We all have those employees who know how good they are and don’t care about other people’s feelings, but that can be a recipe for disaster. Help yourself, your employees, and even your successful employee with a bad attitude.

Critical: What Managers Should Ask at the 90-Day New Hire Performance Review

You have a new hire and have to do a 90-day review. What next? That’s the question many of our website visitors have been asking as they visit this blog. It might not seem like 90 days is a lot of time, but we’ll help you pull more information and think about things in a new way so that your 90-day performance reviews are even better than before.

How to Write SMART Employee Review Goals For The Performance Appraisal

This is the SMART goal’s first appearance on this list, but it isn’t the last. Everyone wants to know more about SMART goals and how we can set better goals that lead to successful employees. This blog gets it right. Use this template to learn more about setting SMART goals, planning them, and achieving them in time for performance reviews.

Find out the secret here →

Webinars

Trakstar held over a dozen webinars this year focused on attracting, retaining, and engaging today’s top talent. Our webinars focused on how to best use our products, trends within human resources and talent management, and preparing for the future. While all of our webinars were filled with information, some struck a chord with Trakstar clients and other people professionals. Our most popular webinars were:

Create an eLearning Library to Level Up Your Employees was our most popular webinar of the year. This webinar focused on creating a repository of courses and materials for onboarding new employees, training and upskilling your existing employees, and even during reskilling.

This webinar has a ton of great insights about how to use our learning management system, Trakstar Learn, and how to build a library of courses and information to train your employees. You can watch the on-demand replay here.

Finish Strong – Preparing For End of the Year Reviews

In this webinar, there was a focus on end-of-year performance reviews and appraisals. While the end of the year has passed, reviews are often completed on a person’s yearly anniversary, so the tips are still applicable.

While the focus is on end-of-year reviews, you’ll find that many of these tips apply to all times of the year.

This webinar focuses on Trakstar Perform, but it has good tips for anyone completing performance reviews. You can watch the on-demand replay here.

More Than Just Buzzwords: Empowering Your Team With DEI

Diversity, equity, and inclusion aren’t going away anytime soon (nor should they), and they are things that many HR leaders and people leaders struggle with in their jobs.

This webinar focuses on using DEI to your advantage by empowering your employees and creating the type of culture you want. In this webinar, we wade into topics and ideas coming up in the new year, which is important to watch.

This webinar focuses on Trakstar Perform, but it has good tips for anyone completing performance reviews. You can catch the on-demand replay here.

Podcasts

The PeopleStar Podcast has grown quite a bit over the last year, and there is no end in sight! Each episode is different and offers a perspective you may not have encountered before. We have a variety of guests that have all dealt with talent management, human resources, and people management at some point in their professional careers. Hosted by our very own Julie Rieken, the PeopleStar Podcast is a favorite for visitors.

Here are some of their favorites episodes:

Building A Business from the Ground Up with Glenn Martin

Glenn Martin holds a special place here: he is the founder of Trakstar. A former VP of Sales and a legend at the company, he sits down with Julie (his daughter!) to discuss building a business and finding the right kind of people.

This episode is a favorite among Trakstar employees, clients, and business leaders who are just starting out.

Give it a listen here →

A Human-Centered Strategy for HR with Alicia Vallarta

This episode struck a nerve with HR leaders all over the world. In this episode, Alicia and Julie talk about how we need to treat our employees and view them as human beings above all else. They also talk about how communication is a pivotal skill for HR leaders, even if they are working with people who aren’t especially good at communicating themselves.

Listen to what they have to say. →

Starting an HR Department From Scratch with Donielle Williams

Another popular episode of the PeopleStar Podcast is this great one from July with Donielle Williams. In it, Julie talks to her about building an HR department where there wasn’t one and what research you have to do, what positions you have to fill, and what tools you can use to get the job done.

If you are starting an HR department (or starting one over), listen to this episode now. →

Whitepapers

According to our 2023 Outlook Survey, many people aren’t using eBooks and whitepapers to get information, but we’ve found that some of our whitepapers get used repeatedly. These were the three that people couldn’t stay away from this year:

A Guide to Employee Engagement

Employee engagement is a pivotal part of a workplace’s culture and how everyone works together to achieve success. If you have a few employees that aren’t engaged, you may be able to overcome it. However, over time, that number of employees will grow, and soon enough, you’ll have a bigger problem on your hands. Want to avoid that?

Download our Guide to Employee Engagement today →

Employee Check-In Template

Closely related to employee engagement is an employee check-in. Are you using employee check-ins appropriately? Our template will help you make the most of them, no matter how long they are or how often you have them.

This template can be adjusted to fit your needs!

Use it as a starting point by downloading our Employee Check-In Template here →

Setting SMART Goals for Employees

No matter what the socio-political climate is, people will always be setting goals and trying to achieve them. Whether it is a busy or quiet period, whether your employees are actively engaged or not, you will be setting goals they need to reach. How can you help them do that? By setting SMART goals for them. This guide will help you set even better SMART goals that they can reach.

Click here to download our guide to Setting SMART Goals for Employees →

Free Downloads

We started offering free downloads this year to help people learn more about the work they do, plan for the future, and make the most of the time they are given. These downloads have been incredibly popular, and we hope to offer even more in 2023. Here are some of the top free downloads we offered:

Talent Development Planner

We just launched this a few weeks ago in December 2022, and it has already been very popular amongst Trakstar clients and people who come across it. It has everything you need to plan for talent development in a new year, quarter, or sprint. There are plenty of pages to download and use on your tablet or print out and use the old-fashioned way.

Click here to download our talent development planner.

SMART Goals Worksheet

Are you setting SMART goals for your employees but having trouble? If you take too much time to think through goals before performance reviews or your employees aren’t reaching their goals, you may want to use our SMART goals worksheet to plan out better goals.

Click here to download.

Onboarding Checklist

How is your onboarding program doing? If you don’t know or know it isn’t working properly, you may need to reset it in the new year. Our onboarding checklist will help you build a better program that leads to employees who feel empowered to be their best.

Click here to get the checklist.

Ready to Make 2023 the Best Year Yet? See Trakstar in Action

If your 2022 goals didn’t come to fruition or you see a busy 2023 ahead, it may be time to invest in talent management software.

Let us help you take care of the little things so your HR employees can fulfill their jobs to the best of their ability. Trakstar supercharges employee performance around pivotal moments in talent development. Make smarter decisions to attract, retain, and engage your workforce. It will only help your organization grow with the people you continue to add to your company.

To learn more about what Trakstar can do for you, schedule a demo today.