Check-ins — Feature Overview

Ben Pemstein Ben Pemstein
· Updated

Check-ins is a recurring feedback and communication tool in 15Five. Each period, employees answer questions covering how they are feeling, their objective progress, their priorities, and any custom questions configured by their manager or admin. After submission, the employee's manager reviews responses and can take action directly from the Check-in — reacting, commenting, flagging answers for follow-up, passing answers up the hierarchy, adding items to their 1-on-1 agenda, or logging wins and challenges.

Check-ins is available on the Perform, Legacy Focus, and Total Platform pricing packages. All roles have access.

Feature Structure

Check-ins is composed of the following sections and tools.

Pulse

Every Check-in opens with the Pulse question: "How did you feel at work since your last Check-in?" Pulse responses are private by default and visible to the employee's manager and anyone above them in the hierarchy. Aggregate Pulse data is available in the Pulse Dashboard.

See Pulse — Feature Overview and Access the Pulse Dashboard in 15Five for details.

Objective Updates

If Objectives are enabled, employees update progress on their active objectives each Check-in period. This keeps long-term goal progress visible to managers without requiring a separate status conversation.

See Objectives — Feature Overview for details.

Priorities

Priorities are short-term tasks tracked within each Check-in. Employees can mark a priority complete, carry it forward to the next period, or remove it. Priorities can be linked to Objectives to create alignment between short- and long-term goals.

See Priorities in Check-ins — when to use them and how for details.

Questions

Admins, group admins, and managers can add questions to Check-ins for their respective audiences. Questions can be drawn from the 15Five Question Bank or created as custom questions. Questions can be set to appear at a specific frequency rather than every period.

See Create a Check-in question, Add question bank questions to Check-ins, and What Tools Are Available When Filling Out a Check-in? for details.

High Fives

Employees can give recognition to colleagues directly within a Check-in by @mentioning a colleague and adding a note. Managers can also give High Fives when reviewing a direct report's Check-in.

See Give a High Five while reviewing a Check-in for details.

Reporting and Analytics

Admins and managers have access to Check-in reporting dashboards covering submission rates, review rates, Pulse trends, Priorities, and question-level response data.

See Check-ins Priorities Dashboard and Reports — Overview, Access the Check-ins Questions Dashboard, Access the Check-ins Polls Dashboard and Download Question Data, and View Check-in metric trends over time (Trends Dashboard) for details.

Roles and Permissions

Role What they do in Check-ins
Employee (direct report) Fills out and submits a Check-in each period.
Manager Reviews direct reports' Check-ins. Can create questions for their team.
Group admin Can create Check-in questions for members of their group.
Account admin Can create Check-in questions for anyone in the organization. Can enable or disable Check-ins company-wide and configure all feature settings.
Global viewer Can view Check-ins for everyone in the organization. This permission is granted by an account admin via a request to 15Five Support.
CEO / top of hierarchy Has no manager in 15Five and is not required to submit Check-ins. Can submit voluntarily. See Can I Submit a Check-in Without a Manager?

Visibility

By default, an employee's Check-in is visible to their direct manager and everyone above them in the reporting hierarchy.

Additional visibility is granted in three ways:

  • Group visibility — the viewer is in a group with group drill-down or group viewing enabled.
  • Follower permissions — the viewer follows the employee's Check-ins.
  • Global viewer permissions — the viewer has been granted global viewer access.

To see who has visibility into your own Check-in, go to the Who can view my Check-in? page in 15Five.

See Who can see my Check-ins?, Check-in visibility and hierarchy — options overview, and Default visibility for Check-ins for full details.

Key Rules

  • Check-ins must be enabled at the company level before any configuration is possible. See Enable or disable Check-ins for your organization.
  • Check-in frequency can be set at the company level, by group, or by individual. When a person belongs to multiple groups with different frequencies, a priority order applies. See Check-in frequency settings — overview.
  • Questions created by an account admin appear for all employees. Questions created by a manager appear only for their direct reports. Questions created by a group admin appear only for group members.
  • Disabling Check-ins for a user or company-wide affects reporting and submission history. See What happens when Check-ins are disabled for a user? and What happens when Check-ins are disabled company-wide?.
  • Global viewer access cannot be self-assigned. An account admin must contact 15Five Support to request this permission for a user.

What You Can Do

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