Group Types are umbrella categories or folders that are used to store individual groups. Following the conclusion of an engagement campaign, leaders can filter engagement survey results by Group Types. In this article, we'll walk through the various Group Types available in Engagement, what data is used to form these Group Types, and resources you can use to create and populate members for each Group Type mentioned.

In this article, you will learn...

Access and availability

⛔️ Required access to Engagement feature settings.
👥 This article is relevant to Engagement Admins and Organization Admins.
📦 This feature is available in the Engage, Legacy Perform, and Total Platform pricing packages.

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Note

Confidentiality standards in Engagement require at least 3-5 responses (depending on your selected settings) from a group for their results to be available post-survey. Keep this in mind as you decide which groups to include in engagement surveys.


Group Types in Engagement

Group Types are made up of groups— segments of employees— that you can filter results by following the completion of an engagement campaign. There are two types of Group Types in Engagement: Custom Groups and System Groups. Use the sections below to learn more about what data is used to form each Group Type, as well as resources you can use to create and populate them.

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Note

Once you've synced Group Types from 15Five to Engage, you can determine whether or not you want to be able to filter results by each individual Group Type.

Custom Groups System Groups

Custom Group types are created, managed, and populated in 15Five. Upon syncing data from 15Five to Engage, the Custom Groups tab will contain all group types and attributes in 15Five. Some Custom Group types are also auto-created based on employee data in 15Five.

Custom Group Types are sourced from the following places in 15Five:

Group types

A group type is an umbrella category or folder that's used to store individual groups (e.g. departments, locations, divisions, teams, Employee Resource Groups/ERGs).

Use these resources to create and populate groups and group types:

Help Center article 💡: Create a group and/or group type
Help Center article 💡: Add people to a group

Once you create and populate group types, you can perform a sync from 15Five to Engage and they will appear as Group Types in the Custom Groups tab.

Manager and Hierarchy groups

Upon syncing data from 15Five to Engage, Group Types will be automatically created for Managers and Hierarchies. No additional steps are needed on your part.

  • Manager groups will be created for each active Manager in 15Five and the direct reports for that manager will be added as members of that group.
  • Hierarchy groups will be created for each active Manager in 15Five that has direct and indirect (downstream) reports, and the direct and indirect reports for that manager will be added as members in that group.
Default attributes

Default attributes are basic employee information— things like first name, hire date, and location. Once you populate these attributes for employees, you can perform a sync from 15Five to Engage and Group Types will be created and populated based on attribute assignment.

The following default attributes are available in 15Five:

Use these resources to populate default attributes for employees:

  • Help Center article 💡: Add new people (contains steps on adding new employees to 15Five either one-off, in bulk, or using an integration)
  • Help Center article 💡: Bulk import or update people (contains steps on how to add new employees or make changes to employee data using a bulk import CSV)
  • Help Center article 💡: Update a person's account settings (contains steps on editing an employee's data one-off)
Demographic Attributes

Demographic Attributes in 15Five allow HR admins to report on key employee trends through the lens of their workforce’s demographics. Breakdowns by demographics and key defining characteristics of an employee are critical to helping people leaders uncover and address problems within their company before they become too big to solve.

Once you enable and populate demographic attributes, you can perform a sync from 15Five to Engage and Group Types will be created based on attribute assignment.

The following Demographic Attributes can be synced from 15Five to Engage:

  • Birth date 
  • Ethnicity
  • Gender
  • Race
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Note

The "Salary" Demographic Attribute is not pulled into Engagement due to its variability.

Custom attributes
If your company tracks/needs additional attributes besides the default and demographic attributes already mentioned, Account admins can create custom attributes. Once you create and populate custom attributes, you can perform a sync from 15Five to Engage and Group Types will be created based on attribute assignment.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What happens if I make changes to groups/attributes in 15Five during a scheduled or in-progress engagement campaign?
Changes to groups and group types will be automatically applied to any scheduled or in-progress engagement campaigns.
Do group-specific engagement survey results update if employees who participated change group membership?

No. Group engagement survey results remain static, meaning they reflect responses from group members who were members of the group at the time of the survey, even if their group membership has changed.

Can employees be placed in more than one team within a group type?

Yes. Within a Group Type (i.e. Location), an employee can have more than one group assignment (i.e. Chicago, Remote). Learn more about adding employees to groups.

Can I create or delete new Group Types?
Yes, you can both create and delete Group Types from the Group Management page in settings. If you delete a Group Type, you will get a strong warning you should review about the implications. When you delete a Group Type, all groups, memberships, AND permissions to access those Groups will be removed.
Can I create a new group within a Group Type on my own?
Yes, this can be done in two ways. You can create and delete groups one by one in the Group Management view. You can also create groups by using the Bulk Import tool. If the Group Type already exists as a column in the file, you can simply add the new value and import the employees. This will create the new group value and create a membership for every employee row that is in this group in the file.
If I rename a group, will trending in group engagement results be impacted?
No. Renaming a group won’t affect historical data, as results snapshots rely on stable identifiers like "group_id" rather than group names.
For small teams that must be combined with others, how will I address their issues?
To maintain confidentiality, we require at least 3-5 responses (based on your selected confidentiality settings) from an individual group to display its results. When teams are combined to make these numbers work, the best practice is to keep the group as close to five as you can and try to combine groups that are similar. For example, if the Sales and Marketing teams works closely together, those might be two groups that would work well to combine. Combining groups that are similar will help to guide action and understand the issues that are affecting the employees. By keeping the combined groups smaller in size, it's easier to focus actions on the group even if they represent combined teams.
When viewing engagement results, why is the participant count across groups greater than the total number of participants who participated in the survey?
If employees are part of more than one group in that group type, you may notice that the participant counts across groups is greater than the total employee count in the organization. This reflects that the employees' results are being included in more than one group.

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