15Five AI is our AI-powered assistant, designed to support people leaders in understanding their teams, taking effective action, streamlining administrative tasks, and driving measurable improvement in engagement, performance, and retention. It works in the background to provide real-time insights and recommendations for more effective, impactful interactions with your team, every time.
In this article, we'll cover key questions related to the use of AI in the 15Five product.
Note
The information contained in this article is subject to change based on 15Five’s evolution of product.
Overview
Beginning in November 2023, 15Five began releasing new AI features to enhance the functionality that 15Five offers and to provide assistance to HR leaders, managers, and individual contributors as they use 15Five’s platform. To offer these features, we have partnered with a leading AI large language model (LLM) to power our AI features.
Here is a bit behind why 15Five has decided to integrate with OpenAI:
- Advanced Insights from data: Leveraging the existing knowledge of our commercial LLM of choice with the 15Five platform enhances the depth of insights derived from employee feedback, surveys, and performance reviews, providing HR teams with a more comprehensive understanding of employee sentiments and engagement.
- Enhanced Manager & Employee Development: By leveraging AI capabilities, 15Five can offer more personalized and data-driven development plans and recommendations for managers, facilitating employee growth and contributing to a culture of continuous improvement.
Check out our 15Five AI One-Pager and Generative AI Additional Terms of Service for more information.
Where AI is used in 15Five:
AI tools are currently available in the following features:
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Engagement (AI Synthesized Feedback Insights): The AI model will analyze open-text survey responses to generate themes and summaries, providing HR teams with deeper insights into employee feedback and engagement.
- Best-Self Review® (AI Assisted Reviews): The AI model helps streamline performance reviews by incorporating a variety of sources to reduce bias, providing suggested feedback, highlighting trends in employee performance data, and offering insights for more constructive and data-driven conversations.
- 1-on-1s (Kona): 15Five's AI-powered coaching assistant that helps managers grow and lead more effectively—without adding to their workload. Integrated seamlessly into meetings, Slack, and the 15Five platform, Kona listens in on 1-on-1 meetings, takes notes, and delivers personalized coaching tips based on each manager’s actual behaviors and 15Five data.
- HR Outcomes Dashboard (AI-powered recommendations): AI-powered recommendations are generated based on organizational data in 15Five and help improve HR outcomes through Action Planning.
FAQs: Use of AI in 15Five Features
We are using OpenAI to enhance the functionality that 15Five offers and to provide assistance to HR leaders, managers, and individual contributors as they use 15Five. OpenAI will allow us to provide helpful summaries of data across the platform and share recommendations of resources and best practices that most align with the needs of your organization or team. AI tools are available in the following features:
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Engagement (AI Synthesized Feedback Insights): The AI model will analyze open-text survey responses to generate themes and summaries, providing HR teams with deeper insights into employee feedback and engagement.
- Best-Self Review® (AI Assisted Reviews): The AI model helps streamline performance reviews by incorporating a variety of sources to reduce bias, providing suggested feedback, highlighting trends in employee performance data, and offering insights for more constructive and data-driven conversations.
- 1-on-1s (AI Manager Copilot):Kona is part of 15Five’s comprehensive Manager Effectiveness Stack—a powerful combination of expert-led Coaching, science-backed Content, and real-time AI Coaching. Together, these tools give every manager the support they need to build confidence, drive performance, and improve retention—without burdening HR teams or introducing new systems.
- HR Outcomes Dashboard (AI-powered recommendations): AI-powered recommendations are generated based on organizational data in 15Five and help improve HR outcomes through Action Planning.
Yes— you currently have the flexibility to choose whether or not to use the AI features in your account. We provide these features as an option to enhance your experience, but you are not currently obligated to use them.
Help Center article 💡: Configure 15Five AI feature settings
AI features can only be enabled and disabled at the company level. Individuals can choose whether or not they want to use these tools in their own accounts.
We offer support resources to help you make the most of AI features. Reach out to our Customer Support Team or your Success Manager for assistance, and access training materials in our Help Center.
We remain committed to providing value to our customers and are making some of the AI additions to the 15Five platform available at no additional cost. Kona is currently only available as an add on to Total Platform, since using the HR Outcomes Dashboard in tandem is a crucial step to measuring the success of Kona at your organization. As we continue to expand on the potential that AI will bring to the 15Five platform, we will communicate if there are any pricing adjustments prior to any renewal of your Term.
Manager Effectiveness AI Summaries automatically appear in the Behavior drawer whenever you're viewing unfiltered data. No extra clicks — insights are generated and waiting for you. Learn more →
FAQs: Data Collection & Security
We take data privacy seriously. Before sending data to the LLM, we remove personally identifiable information (PII), ensuring that only the information relevant to AI features is shared. Our agreement with OpenAI also prohibits them from using any 15Five customer data for training purposes. The AI functionality is intended to be GDPR compliant.
AI features in 15Five will use different data sources based on which feature is being used:
- Engage feedback insights: open-text survey feedback is submitted to the LLM along with 15Five's driver definitions and survey statements to associate open-text feedback with a particular driver
- AI-assisted reviews: employee review resources (high fives, wins & challenges, feedback, etc.), employee self-reviews, and peer reviews are submitted to the LLM to be summarized as Strengths and Opportunities. In addition, managers can prompt the LLM to draft and/or improve a response to an open-text question (using the same resources plus objectives and 1-on-1 data)
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Kona: All data is encrypted at rest and in transit. Notes are private and accessible only to the manager and their direct report. More details are available in our Privacy Policy.
In all of these situations, the data is not collected by our AI sub-processor; 15Five submits a strict set of de-identified data to the LLM for the purpose of responding to a query. Data is sent from the 15Five web application server to the LLM sub-processor (all within the United States).
Personal data is not used (PII is removed before sending to the sub-processor). Personal data is not shared with others. Data is not retained by the sub-processor.
We maintain robust security measures to protect your data during the integration process. Data encryption, access controls, and regular security audits are some of the steps we take to ensure data security.
No. Any data that is stored/shared in 15Five is subject to our Privacy Policy and DPA, as applicable. The information shared via the AI tool is used only to provide the services to customers and as otherwise permitted pursuant to our agreement with them.
To view a full list of Platform sub-processors, please visit this link.