At 15Five, protecting employee data is a top priority. To support onboarding, troubleshooting, and training—without compromising privacy—15Five offers secure, read-only employee impersonation for HR Admins.
Employee impersonation allows HR Admins to temporarily view the 15Five platform from an employee’s perspective, while preventing any action-taking and automatically hiding private content. Visibility is always limited to what the HR Admin already has permission to view.
In this article, you will learn:
What employee impersonation means in 15Five
Employee impersonation in 15Five is read-only access for HR Admins.
It allows HR Admins to see the product as a specific employee sees it—without logging in as that person, taking actions on their behalf, or accessing private information.
Why HR Admins use employee impersonation
Employee impersonation helps HR teams support employees faster and more accurately, without requesting screenshots, scheduling screen shares, or creating test accounts.
HR Admins commonly use impersonation to:
Reduce onboarding friction
Ensure new hires see the right content and understand what to do on day one.Resolve issues more quickly
Validate visibility or permission concerns before escalating to Support.Validate employee experiences at scale
Sanity-check how reviews, Check-ins, and Objectives appear across roles.Create clearer training and documentation
Capture accurate screenshots and demos that reflect the real employee experience.
What HR Admins can do while impersonating
View the platform from the employee’s perspective
Confirm setup and permissions
Reproduce reported issues
Walk through employee workflows
What HR Admins cannot do while impersonating
- No in-app or real-time notifications to employees when impersonation occurs
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No employee-facing “access request” flow—admins do not request permission before impersonating
- Rationale: Admins already hold privileged access; this feature does not expose additional data
- No ability for admins to take action while impersonating
- No customizable redaction rules per organization or role
- No visibility changes beyond what admins already have in their normal role
- No impersonation analytics or reporting dashboards beyond audit logs
- No ability to assign which admins have access
- No ability to globally exclude/remove individuals from being impersonated
- No ability to globally disable functionality
All write actions are blocked or disabled to ensure impersonation is safe and privacy-first.
How to impersonate an employee
There are a few areas you can select an employee to impersonate:
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Manage People page - click on the three dots next to an employee's name and select the Impersonate option:
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User Settings page - from an employee's setting page, there will be an option in the
Initiating an impersonation session
Before impersonation begins, HR Admins must confirm the session in a pop-up modal.
This confirmation:
Reinforces that impersonation is read-only
Clarifies that private content will remain hidden
Prevents accidental entry into impersonation mode
Once confirmed, the impersonation session starts immediately.
Impersonation session
When impersonation begins:
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A banner appears to indicate that the HR admins is now viewing the 15Five platform as the selected employee:
Ending an impersonation session
To end an impersonation session, you can either:
- click End Session from the banner at the top of the screen
- Let the session timeout automatically (occurs after 30 min of inactivity). A message displays notifying them that they were logged out due to inactivity and have returned to their usual admin view.
FAQs
Q: Can HR Admins see private or sensitive employee data?
A: No. HR Admins only see information they already have permission to view. Private notes, private comments, drafts, and unsubmitted content are always hidden.
Q: Can HR Admins make changes while impersonating?
A: No. Impersonation is fully read-only. All write actions are blocked or disabled.
Q: Will employees know they were impersonated?
A: No. End-user notifications are not included in this functionality.
Q: How long does an impersonation session last?
A: Sessions automatically end after a period of inactivity (30 min). When this happens, admins are returned to their normal view with a clear message explaining why.
Q: Can organizations disable impersonation or limit who can use it?
A: No. At this time, all HR Admins can impersonate any employee in their account.
Q: What happens if an HR admins tries to take an action during impersonation?
A: The button will be greyed out or the action will be blocked with a tooltip indicating that actions are unavailable while impersonating.
Q: Does impersonation work across all areas of 15Five?
A: Yes, except in areas where data must be redacted for privacy or security reasons.