15Five is a B2B SaaS brand that offers employee performance management software to companies around the globe to build inclusive HR departments that better reflect our modern workforce’s needs. Their software handles everything from performance reviews, engagement surveys, feedback tools, and more.

HR Superstars is their online community that brings together thousands of HR professionals in a quickly growing collaborative space. Within the community, members attend live events with industry leaders, office hours for problem-solving their own unique organizational problems, and gain access to a large resource center packed to the brim with HR strategy playbooks, interactive templates, and guides you can’t find anywhere else.

Today, the human resources industry has evolved from being an administrative function focused on compensation and benefits, to a strategic function that now must also consider other important qualities for workers like hybrid / remote work, leadership authenticity, company values, and personal growth opportunities.

15Five tasked Adam Weber, their SVP of Community, to create a robust community for HR professionals that was more than a Slack group or Facebook Group. A place that people interested in advancing the conversation around human resources could express themselves and learn.

Adam saw the potential of how Mighty Pro’s cultural software and branded apps to build a thriving community for 15Five. He worked with us to launch 15Five’s HR Superstars Community-branded iOS and Android apps in 2021. Since then, the HR Superstars community has become a premier destination for HR Professionals with over 4,000 members and counting.

HR Superstars

Here are a few benefits they’ve seen since launching their branded apps with Mighty Pro:

- Hosted over 50 events in their first year
- Their half-day event, The HR Superstars Summit, converted 1000 members alone
- Their community has grown to over 4,000 members

“Mighty Pro was the best community platform for creating a unique sense of place for our members. It also allows us to have an engaging social feed without sacrificing on our live events and it is extremely easy to manage and update without technical experience.”

Creating a community to raise brand awareness and retention

For over a decade, 15Five has been building innovative software products that help businesses create great working environments with effective managers, and engaged, high-performance employees.

While their SaaS products were helping many businesses looking to elevate their HR offerings, 15Five knew that building a community would be an essential part of their strategy going forward.

“Over the last three years, we had determined a vision for what our community could be,” Adam says. “Two of our competitors already had established communities. We had to figure out how we were different. I saw the opportunity to partner with Mighty Pro because we could create a really beautiful place that feels safe.."

For 15Five, they viewed HR Superstars a big part of their company’s future from a marketing perspective. One that is a manifestation of their brand.

“We've always felt our biggest differentiator is who we are. And so the community is a way for us to live out our values in the market and give a transparent look at why our company is special,“ says Adam.

Another important aspect of launching the HR Superstars Community was the retention component. While you do not have to be a user of 15Fives’s software to join the community, the whole experience is designed to enhance the product they offer.

“The community has a big retention component to it as well. When people go through signup, even if they’re not customers, the experiences we offer are complementary to our product,” says Adam. “It’s like we’re taking things to a different level.”

Why Mighty Pro?

Many organizations are interested in starting communities now, but everyone has a different idea of what “community” actually means. Some view it simply as a gathering place for their customers, but the most successful communities become hubs for all of the valuable resources, events, courses, and experiences you offer, all in one place.

15Five had considered a number of online community platforms when developing HR Superstars, but Mighty Pro was the best fit due to their need to create events and conferences.

“A big thing for us was finding a place where we could build a community and host a lot of events seamlessly,” says Adam. “It was an added bonus that when I began building the community on Mighty Pro I was impressed by how easy it was to make something look awesome quickly.”

15Five's strategy for building the world's best HR community: think bigger than Facebook Groups and focus on events

As the SVP of Community, Adam had big dreams for what HR Superstars could be. He wanted to build a place that was more than an overwhelming group chat on Slack or Facebook.

A key motivation for Adam was making HR Superstars a destination for events focused around human resources topics. Adam told us, “In our first year alone, we hosted over 50 events within our community and were able to cover a lot of ground, evolving people’s thinking about our industry along the way. It’s been very validating.”

And while HR Superstars is built for anyone to join without the pressure of having to buy 15Five's products, Adam has found innovative ways to showcase just how great their software is in short live events hosted monthly.

Making HR Superstars a go-to destination for innovative HR playbooks, guides, and industry knowledge from experts

Adam and his team are turning HR Superstars into a go-to destination for people looking for resources to elevate their human resources strategies. In a quickly growing resource center within the community, members gain access to valuable playbooks for review processes, self-care & burnout guides, healthy management practices, and more.

HR Superstars took a three-pronged approach to designing the community and a key component of it was not only getting the best minds in the industry to convene together, but also to tap into their perspective as invaluable resources.

Adam told us a bit about that, “There's what the community offers, there's these events, and then there's what the experts who are front end of the field, to create some separation there for those people."

“Our HR Superstars Summit event converted over 1000 attendees into members of the community.”

A great example of how Adam has leveraged the work they’ve been doing creating awesome live events throughout the year in HR Superstars is their HR Superstars Summit.

It’s a half-day event that provides HR leaders with a forum to network, participate in candid discussions on essential industry topics, and learn actionable insights that will help create positive impact in their organizations.

“The HR Superstars Summit is the best event experience we have done so far,” says Adam. “We took three months of content in the community–all the best events–and combined them into a half day conference. We had tons of members who reached out saying how great it was. And the best part is of our over 3000 registered guests, 1000 of them ended up becoming members of the community.”

Adam sees initiatives like the HR Superstars Summit as important pieces of the puzzle for getting 15Five’s products in front of more people. With an industry that is changing rapidly due to more initiatives like remote work, HR Superstars has become a place that is providing valuable resources and networking opportunities like nowhere else, and for Adam, it’s gratifying work.

“I’m making an impact at a scale that I’ve never seen before. It’s so inspiring, and honestly, incredibly fun to continue building up this community on this platform.”