Understand Group Types in engagement survey results

Group Types are the segmentation dimensions — such as department, location, or tenure — that appear as filters in your engagement survey results. This article explains what Group Types exist, how they are populated, and what constraints govern their use.

Note: Engagement confidentiality requires a minimum of 3–5 responses per group (depending on your confidentiality settings) for that group's results to display. Groups below this threshold are suppressed from results.

Feature Structure

A Group Type is a category that contains individual groups — segments of employees. For example, the Group Type "Location" contains groups such as "Chicago" and "Remote." After a campaign ends, Group Types appear as selectable filters in the engagement results view.

Engagement Admins and Organization Admins can control which Group Types are available as filters in results.

Group Type Sources

Custom Group Types

Custom Group Types are created and managed in 15Five. They are sourced from:

  • Groups you create manually — created and populated through the Group Management page or bulk import
  • Default attributes — basic employee fields populated in 15Five (see list below)
  • Demographic attributes — workforce demographic fields synced from 15Five to Engage
  • Custom attributes — additional attributes created by Account Admins beyond the default and demographic fields

After you save changes to groups or attributes, the nightly automated sync applies updates and makes the Group Type available as a filter in upcoming or active engagement campaigns.

##### Default attributes

Default attributes are standard employee fields in 15Five. When populated, they generate Group Types automatically. The following default attributes are available:

  • Email
  • Employee ID
  • First name
  • Last name
  • Start date
  • Hire date
  • Termination date
  • Job title
  • Job description
  • Location
  • Strengths
  • Timezone

##### Demographic attributes

The following demographic attributes sync from 15Five to Engage when enabled and populated:

  • Birth date (populates the Age group filter in engagement results)
  • Ethnicity
  • Gender
  • Race
Note: The Salary demographic attribute is not synced to Engagement.

##### Custom attributes

Account Admins can create custom attributes for any employee data not covered by default or demographic attributes. After creation and population, the nightly sync generates corresponding Group Types.

Manager and Hierarchy Group Types

These Group Types are created automatically — no setup is required.

  • Manager groups — created for each active manager in 15Five; members are that manager's direct reports
  • Hierarchy groups — created for each active manager who has direct and indirect reports; members include all direct and indirect (downstream) reports

Tenure Groups

Tenure groups are populated from employees' hire dates. As employees remain with the organization, they move into different tenure bands automatically. This Group Type lets you filter engagement results by length of service.

Age Groups

Age groups are populated from employees' birth dates. This Group Type lets you filter engagement results by age range.

Note: Hire cohort groups (previously available as legacy system groups) are no longer available as filters in engagement results. System Groups have been phased out as part of the retirement of legacy engagement tools.

Key Rules

  • A Group Type must meet the confidentiality threshold (3–5 responses, based on your settings) for its results to appear. Groups below the threshold are suppressed.
  • Group Types are available as filters only after the nightly sync runs following data population.
  • Employees can belong to more than one group within a single Group Type. When this occurs, their results are counted in each group they belong to, which causes group participant totals to exceed the overall survey participant count.
  • Engagement results for a group are static — they reflect membership at the time of the survey, not current membership.
  • Renaming a group does not affect historical trend data. Trending relies on stable internal group IDs, not group names.
  • Deleting a Group Type removes all groups, all memberships, and all permissions associated with those groups.

What You Can Do

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