With groups in 15Five, you can create subsets of people to organize your company based on business units, departments, locations, common interests, and more. These group types can be pulled into specific features across 15Five for segmenting, reporting, and filtering.
If your organization uses an HRIS or other integration to manage groups, please refer to the integration-specific article for instructions on managing group types and groups.
In this article, you will learn...
- An overview of groups and group types
- How to use groups and throughout 15Five
- How to create a group type or group one-off
- How to create groups and group types in bulk via CSV import
Access and availability
⛔️ Required access to Manage groups.
👥 This article is relevant to Account admins and Managers.
📦 This feature is available in all pricing packages.
Note
Only account administrators can create group types. Both account administrators and managers can create groups. Account administrators can create a group with anyone as the group administrator and can include anyone as a member. Managers can create a group with limited group administrator options and can only include people in their hierarchy as members. Once the group is created, only account administrators and the group admin(s) can manage group settings.
Are you more of a visual learner? Check out this video ⬇️
Groups and Group types Overview
A group type is an umbrella label used to organize groups.
A group is a subset of people in your organization made up of group members.
Here's an example: if you create a group type called 'Offices', you could create groups for each city your company has an office in: maybe Berlin, Denver, Madrid, New York, and Raleigh. Then, you'll add group members to the groups that align with their office location.
Using groups throughout 15Five
Once you create groups and group types, they can be pulled into specific features across 15Five for segmenting, reporting, and filtering. Click through the sections below to see how groups can be leveraged in different features.
In Reporting, you can use groups in the following ways:
- Filter the 1-on-1s Dashbaord by specific groups to see how well different groups are doing with usage.
In Best-Self Review®, you can use groups in the following ways:
- Create group-specific review questions while creating a question template.
- Include only members of specific groups as review cycle participants while creating a review cycle.
- Filter review results by specific groups when analyzing results.
In Check-ins, you can use groups in the following ways:
- Create group-specific Check-in questions to be asked to group members in Check-ins. For example: if the Raleigh office recently changed office locations, you could create a group Check-in question asking them how they feel about the new space.
- Limit Check-ins to specific groups, or exclude specific groups from filling out Check-ins.
- Filter Check-ins reports by groups to gauge how different subsets of people are performing, feeling, or answering specific questions.
In Engagement, you can use groups in the following ways:
- Filter engagement survey results by groups. This is helpful as you dig into how the results of specific groups compared to those of the entire organization so you can determine the most impactful places to take action.
- Give a high five to a specific group by @mentioning them.
- Filter the High Fives Dashboard by a group to see high fives that only members of that group or the group itself have received.
- Filter the Dashboard by groups to see how they're doing compared to other groups or the company as a whole.
- Compare how groups within a group type are performing in the 'Breakdown' tab of the HR Outcomes Dashboard.
- Create group-specific objectives during the process of creating an objective. This allows you to create group goals that either align with company-wide goals or are specific to the group's success.
- Allow only members of specific groups to have access to an objective during the process of creating an objective.
- Filter the Objectives page (in-app link) by groups to view group member objectives.
- Filter Objectives dashboard by groups to view group member objectives gauge how different subsets of people are performing.
All in all, groups are invaluable in helping your organization utilize 15Five. Continue reading for more information about creating group types and groups.
Create a group type and/or group one-off
This section walks through how to create group types and groups one-off. If you'd like to create several group types/groups at once, the easiest way to do so is via bulk import, which is covered in the next section of this article.
Note
Only account admins can create group types.
- Click on the 'Settings' gear in the top, right-hand corner of 15Five.
- Select 'People' from the dropdown menu to open the 'Manage people' page.
- At the top of the page, click 'Manage groups'.
- You're now on the 'Manage groups' page. By default, you will see two group types: Groups and Departments. If you'd like to proceed with creating group types in addition to those, click Create a new group type.
- Give your new group type a name and click Save.
- Your new group type will now appear on the list of group types on the 'Manage groups' page.
Note
Both account admins and direct managers can create groups. Account administrators can create a group with anyone as the group administrator and can include anyone as a member. Direct managers can create a group with limited group administrator options and can only include people in their hierarchy as members. Once the group is created, only account administrators and the group administrator can manage group settings.
- From the 'Manage groups' page, click on the name of the group type you want to add a group under.
- Click the Create a new group button.
- Name your group and double-check that the group is being created under the correct group type.
- Appoint group admin(s). Group admins can manage group questions, group members, and group settings. Only account admins and direct managers can be appointed as a group admin.
Note
Group admins are also not members of the group by default. If the group admin(s) should also be a member of the group, please add them as such.
- Add group members. Account admins can add anyone as a group member, whereas direct managers can only add their direct reports and people in their hierarchy. HINT: Check the 'Manage people' page to see who can be included in your group.
- Select visibility and Check-in frequency settings for your group. For more information, see our "Edit group settings" Help Center article.
- Finally, click Create group or Create group & add another.
Create group types and groups in bulk via CSV import
If you want to create a large number of groups and add members all at once, the best way to do so is via bulk import. This section walks through how to create a bulk import CSV to create groups and add group members, and upload it to 15Five.
Note
You must add people to groups to create group types and groups via CSV. If you'd like to create group types/groups without adding members, you must follow the steps in the previous section of this article. To learn more about our bulk import feature, check out our "Bulk import or update people" Help Center article.
- Click on the 'Settings' gear in the top, right-hand corner of 15Five.
- Select 'People' from the dropdown menu to open the 'Manage people' page.
- Click 'Import' in the top navigation bar.
- You are now on the bulk import page. From here, download your company's current employment structure by clicking the Download current structure button at the top of the page. Keep a copy of this document in a safe place in case any unintended changes are made when you upload your CSV.
- Each group type gets its own column in a CSV import. You can create new group types via bulk import CSV by adding a new column with the format group_type_NewGroupType (e.g. group_type_Department).
To create a new group, add the new group name to the appropriate group type column. For example— if you want to create a group called Learning & Development in the group type Team Initiatives, your bulk import CSV would look like this: - Then, click Choose file at the bottom of the screen and find the CSV from your computer that you would like to import. Please note: the file must be in UTF-8 CSV format.
- Once you have selected the file that you want to import, a 'Preview import' screen will appear. Review the changes to be made, then click Finish import.
- When the import is complete, you can navigate back to the 'Manage groups' page to see all newly-created group types and groups. When creating groups via bulk import, you do not have the option to set desired group settings. If you'd like to change the default group settings, you can do so by following the steps in our "Edit group settings" Help Center article.