It's easy to deactivate accounts of people who are no longer part of your organization or no longer using 15Five. Deactivating an individual removes them from future billing and removes their access to 15Five. You can read about what user data is retained or deleted upon their deactivation in the "What happens when you deactivate a user" section of this article.
In this article, you will learn...
- How to Deactivate a Person's Account 👤
- How to Deactivate Accounts in Bulk 👥
- What Happens to Data When You Deactivate a User ❌
- Related Articles 📖
- Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) ❓
Access and availability
⛔️ Required access to Manage people.
👥 This article is relevant to Account admins (can deactivate anyone's account) and Managers (can deactivate accounts for anyone in their hierarchy).
📦 This ability is available in all pricing packages.
Note
If your company uses SCIM or an Identify Provider to manage employee 15Five membership, you should remove employees via SCIM or in your IdP, rather than from within 15Five. Failure to do so may result in manually deactivated employees being reactivated in 15Five upon your next sync.
How to Deactivate a Person's Account 👤
- Click People in 15Five's main, left-hand navigation.
- You'll land on the "Manage people" page. From here, use the filters or search bar at the top to find the person whose account you want to deactivate.
- Click on a person's name to open their account settings.
- Click Deactivate [Name]'s account in the top, right-hand corner of the page.
- A pop-up will appear. Select the reason for deactivation, then click Deactivate account.
Tip
Selecting a reason for deactivation fuels turnover data on the HR Outcomes Dashboard, giving your HR team powerful insights into trends and talent retention. The more complete your data, the smarter your strategy.
- If the person whose account you're deactivating is a manager, you'll also be asked to select a person to take over management of their direct reports.
- The person's account will move to the Deactivated tab, and they will no longer have access to 15Five.
Note
If you need to permanently delete a person's data, please contact our Support Team. They can enable PII deletion to ensure all personal information is fully removed.
How to Deactivate Accounts in Bulk 👥
There are two options for bulk deactivating multiple people's accounts—either via the Manage People page or using bulk import.
- Click People in 15Five's main, left-hand navigation.
- You'll land on the "Manage people" page. To deactivate multiple people, check the boxes to the left of their names and use the 'Actions' button to deactivate them.
- A pop-up will appear. Select the reason for deactivation, then click Deactivate account.
- If any of the people you're deactivating are managers, you'll also be asked to select someone to take over management of their direct reports:
- Upon deactivation, these individuals will move to the Deactivated tab, and they will no longer have access to 15Five.
Note
If you need to permanently delete a person's data, please contact our Support Team. They can enable PII deletion to ensure all personal information is fully removed.
- To track why someone left the organization, follow the steps in our "Add termination data" article. Recording this information—such as whether the person was terminated, resigned, or remained with the company but stopped using 15Five—feeds into the HR Outcomes Dashboard, helping you analyze turnover patterns and spot trends in regrettable attrition.
- Click People in 15Five's main, left-hand navigation.
- Open the "Import" tab at the top of the page.
- 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.
Tip
We suggest downloading two copies of your current structure: one to make edits to and upload, and another to keep in a safe place for re-upload in case any unintended changes are made.
- Create your bulk import CSV, including the following columns:
- email or employee_id (depending on your company's selected Employee Identifier)
- is_active (type "false" for the individuals you're deactivating)
- [Optional] To record employees' termination dates, include and populate the termination_date column.
Tip
If you want to make other changes during your bulk import, please refer to our "Bulk import or update people" article for more information.
- 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.
- A Preview import screen will appear. Review the changes that will be made, then click Finish import at the bottom of the page.
- Depending on the size of your CSV, it may take up to 15 minutes for the import to complete. Once the import is complete, updates will be reflected in 15Five.
- Upon completion of the import, deactivated individuals will move to the Deactivated tab, and they will no longer have access to 15Five.
Note
If you need to permanently delete a person's data, please contact our Support Team. They can enable PII deletion to ensure all personal information is fully removed.
- To track why someone left the organization, follow the steps in our "Add termination data" article. Recording this information—such as whether the person was terminated, resigned, or remained with the company but stopped using 15Five—feeds into the HR Outcomes Dashboard, helping you analyze turnover patterns and spot trends in regrettable attrition.
What Happens to Data When You Deactivate a User ❌
This section explains how deactivating a user in 15Five impacts their data across key features. It also outlines your options for downloading data before deactivation.
If a user is deactivated during an active engagement campaign:
- Their previous survey responses will be removed.
- They will be excluded from response rate calculations.
If they are later reactivated or their survey status is manually updated to “Yes”, and they had already completed the survey before deactivation, their previous responses will be restored. If they hadn’t completed the survey, they will begin receiving reminders again, according to the campaign’s schedule.
- A deactivated employee’s past Check-ins remain visible to their direct manager at the time of deactivation and to others with access via hierarchy-based visibility. These Check-ins can be found under the “Everyone’s” tab.
- Group-level and follower visibility for past Check-ins no longer apply once a user is deactivated.
Note
Reporting on Check-ins follows these same visibility rules. If an account admin pulls a Check-ins report for a timeframe when the employee was active, the employee will appear as deactivated, and their Check-ins will not display—unless the report is run by their former direct manager.
Help Center article 💡: Print or download a Check-in
Once a user is deactivated, their 1-on-1 agendas are no longer visible in 15Five, regardless of when the 1-on-1s occurred.
To retain 1-on-1 content, we recommend that a Global Viewer with 1-on-1 visibility download or print agendas before deactivation. Learn how to print or download a 1-on-1 agenda →
Note
Because 1-on-1s become inaccessible after deactivation, any 1-on-1 activity by the individual is also excluded from 1-on-1s reporting.
- A deactivated person’s historical review results remain visible to anyone who had visibility into them before deactivation.
- HR admins can still download the person’s full review history even after they are deactivated. Learn how →
If a person is deactivated during an active review cycle:
- If they submitted their self review before deactivation, that review remains visible.
- If they didn't submit their self review, they will be removed from the cycle and will not affect cycle statistics.
- Any reviews they submitted about others will still appear.
- Unsubmitted reviews assigned to them will be removed.
Help Center article 💡: Download my company's review results
- Individual objectives they own will be removed from 15Five upon deactivation.
-
Group and Company-wide objectives owned by the deactivated employee will remain visible.
Note
If you edit a Group or Company-wide objective owned by a deactivated user, 15Five will prompt you to assign a new owner before saving.
- Child objectives tied to still-active parent objectives will remain accessible.
High fives given by the deactivated users remain visible on the High Fives Feed. High fives they received will be removed.
Completed feedback requests remain visible, even after the person who provided the feedback is deactivated. If the feedback was shared with the requestor's manager, the manager will retain access
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) ❓
Yes. By default, all user data will continue to be stored on the backend (so if the person is reactivated, their account can be reactivated with all data intact). However, we suggest downloading any user data you want for your records before deactivating a person's account since it will no longer be available in 15Five upon deactivation.
If you'd like to permanently delete user information, please reach out to our Support Team and they can give you the ability to PII delete a person's data.
When people are deactivated, your account will continue paying for their vacant seats for the remainder of your current contract. We aren't able to offer refunds or credits for people who are deactivated during your contract period. However, we fill vacant seats first before charging for additional seats if you add additional users to 15Five. For more information on Billing Terms and conditions, see this page.
Help Center article 💡: How does adding/removing people impact billing?