Remote employee identity verification, built on consent

You interviewed a candidate, checked their references and hired them. Now they work from a computer you have never seen, possibly in a country you will never visit. Time-tracking screenshots tell you that work is happening; they do not tell you who is doing it. Shared accounts and quietly outsourced jobs are difficult to spot from the output alone, because the work still arrives.

SCREENish addresses the question directly. Face Recognition, currently in beta, checks during tracked work sessions that the person at the keyboard matches a photo you approved in advance. It runs inside the same time tracker your team already uses for screenshots and work logs, and it never switches on until the employee has explicitly agreed to it.

How face verification for remote workers works

1. You request consent

From the PROJECTS page, you send a consent request from the Face Recognition column next to the employee's name. The request appears the next time they open their dashboard and stays on screen until they answer it. It tells them exactly which employer is asking and what for. Their answer is recorded with a date and kept as proof for your records. If they decline, the feature stays off — you cannot enable it on their behalf. The full flow is described in Consent: Requesting Consent from Your Team.

2. The employee submits a reference photo

After agreeing, the employee sets up a profile photo from their own account. They get one entry per employer who has asked for Face Recognition, each with its own consent switch, so agreeing to you never grants anything to anyone else. Their photo is used only to confirm it is them during work sessions and is never shared with other employers. See Face Recognition: Setting Up Your Photo for the employee-side steps.

3. You review and approve the photo

The photo waits for your review. You check that the face is clear, well lit and unmistakably theirs, then approve it — or reject it with a reason so they know what to fix and can submit a better one. Once a photo is approved, you press Enable Face Recognition and checking begins.

4. Sessions are verified while they work

With the feature enabled, SCREENish verifies during tracked sessions that the person working matches the approved photo. The match rate per hour appears in your WORK LOGS alongside the screenshots and activity data you already review, so identity verification becomes part of your normal workflow rather than a separate tool.

Consent first, by design

Biometric checks are sensitive, and SCREENish treats them that way. The consent model is not a checkbox buried in onboarding — it is built into how the feature operates:

• Nothing runs without agreement. Face Recognition cannot be switched on for an employee until they accept your request from their own dashboard.
• Consent is per employer. An employee who works for several companies through SCREENish decides separately for each one. Agreeing to one employer does not agree for any other.
• Consent is withdrawable at any time. The employee can turn their consent switch off from their profile settings whenever they choose.
• Every answer is recorded with a date and kept as documentation you can point to later.

If you employ people in the EU, this structure matters: consent that is informed, specific to one employer, recorded and revocable is the standard that consent-based processing is measured against. You get the verification, and your employees keep control over their own biometric data.

A match rate you control

Each employee with Face Recognition enabled has a minimum acceptance rate — the confidence SCREENish needs before it counts a check as a match. Higher is stricter. Set it too high and ordinary things start failing honest checks: a dim room, a new pair of glasses, a hat. Most teams are best served leaving it at the default and raising it only with a specific reason. A low hourly match rate is worth a conversation, not a conclusion — cameras and lighting fail far more often than people do. Details are in Face Recognition: Setting the Match Rate.

A broken webcam is not an accusation

Verification tools that cannot tell a hardware failure from evasion put managers in an unfair position. SCREENish separates the two. When the camera does not deliver a usable picture, the day in WORK LOGS shows a notice reporting how many checks were affected and when — with plenty of ordinary explanations, from another app holding the camera to a closed laptop lid, a privacy shutter or a failed driver.

One case is detected specifically: when the camera switches on but never sends any video, the log shows a Camera malfunction notice, and the employee simultaneously sees a popup on their own screen (at most once every 30 minutes) advising them to restart the computer. You both find out at the same time, and once the camera works again, face checks resume on their own — nothing needs to be reset. See Work Logs: Camera Notices During Face Verification for what each notice means.

Frequently asked questions

How can I verify that my remote employee is the person I hired?

With SCREENish Face Recognition (beta), the employee grants consent and submits a profile photo, you approve it, and tracked work sessions are then checked against that photo. The match rate per hour appears in your work logs, so you can see that the person tracking time is the person you approved.

Can I enable face verification without the employee's agreement?

No. The feature stays off until the employee accepts your consent request from their own dashboard, and you cannot enable it on their behalf. If they decline, that is the end of it. Every answer is recorded with a date and kept as proof for your records.

Can an employee withdraw consent after granting it?

Yes, at any time, from their profile settings. Each employer who has requested Face Recognition has a separate consent switch there, so consent given to one employer never applies to another.

What happens if the employee's webcam stops working?

Your work log shows a notice reporting how many checks were affected and when, rather than treating the gap as evasion. If the camera turned on but sent no video, a Camera malfunction notice appears and the employee gets an on-screen popup (at most once every 30 minutes) advising a restart. When the camera works again, checks resume automatically.

Will glasses, hats or poor lighting make honest employees fail checks?

They can lower match confidence, which is why each employee has an adjustable minimum match rate. Most teams should keep the default setting and treat a low hourly rate as a prompt to check the camera and lighting first — equipment fails far more often than people do.