5 reasons keystroke and screenshot monitoring is bad for your business. Here is what’s good.

So, why no screenshots monitoring and keystrokes recording? Software that monitors screenshots and keystrokes is inefficient, as it takes a ton of time to analyze the data, it’s a threat to the data security and is invasive to the employees’ privacy. Using keystroke & screenshots monitoring software might consequently lead to personnel flow, money waste, legal issues, loss of clients, and damage to your reputation. Depending on your monitoring business goals there are safer and more effective solutions.

5 reasons screenshot & keystroke monitoring is bad for your business:

1. Work environment negatively affected

According to the CIPD research, recording keystrokes and monitoring screenshots can damage trust between managers and their team members: "73% of employees feel it would damage trust between workers and their employers." Lack of trust ruins the workplace environment. What's good: To safely and effectively monitor employee productivity/involvement you can track numbers: how productive employee screen is, how often employees click buttons. WorkTime gives you the number, how productive employee screen is, e.g. Greg's screen is 73% productive and 27% unproductive due to Netflix use. Also WorkTime offers keystroke counter, an effective and safe replacement to keystroke recorder. Keystroke counter shows how often employees press buttons, e.g. Alice top keyboard use application is Facebook, which is an unproductive working time use.

2. Increase of payroll and hiring expenses

Keystrokes and screenshots monitoring is excessive surveillance that collects a lot of detailed data about employees work and it even might catch some personal data. Keystrokes recording and screenshots monitoring is a great step towards micromanagement (unless it is used for a deep investigation, which is not usually the case). Micromanagement keeps the working process far from effective. Micromanagement results in extra costs for businesses. For example, analyzing keystrokes and screenshots monitoring reports takes a lot of time, and not just time, but the paid time. Also, screenshots and keystrokes recording causes increased spending because new employees might ask for more compensation if they know they will be under excessive monitoring with a potential invasion to their privacy.

3. Personnel flow or risk of losing your best employees

Obsessive workplace surveillance affects staff motivation, limiting their workplace autonomy. Your best employees might simply leave because of keystrokes tracking or screenshots monitoring. Take a look at how these features could potentially harm your business from a real-life example.

An American attorney retired from business

During the pandemic times, an attorney was going to work from her home in Ohio. However, a promising legal company that hired her, was using an excessive surveillance system. It included continuous screenshot and keystroke tracking. The process was so stressful that the lady had to break her contract in 2 weeks of cooperation. What's good: At WorkTime, we offer an employee monitoring approach that is both safe and transparent. Non-invasive monitoring is focused on productivity analysis strictly without recording any personal employee data. With WorkTime, you will know what is the productivity level, attendance quality, active time amount of the entire company, every department and every employee, getting graphic results from day one of the software implementation.

"We have been using WorkTime for about a year now in our company and we kept it transparent to the employees from the very beginning. It was very easy to explain to our employees what our business goals were and what were the reasons behind our decision to monitor their productivity."– USA, law firm.

4. System resources & managers’ time wasted

Screenshot and keystroke recording produces lots of data. It requires more storage and transferring it creates more load on your network. Besides, this data (images and keystrokes) is difficult to analyze, as it might take forever to examine these endless and inconveniently presented files. So, when you need to make some important business decisions, you waste your money at least twice here. Take a look at a real-life example.

Web banking details revealed

The banking details of a top Canadian manager were unintentionally revealed. The incident occurred when the company’s IT team tried connecting to every company computer remotely to solve an emergency virus problem. The urgency in this situation resulted in screenshots of confidential banking information being inadvertently leaked. And this happened in a matter of seconds. The manager was not pleased with the occurrence. Thankfully, no legal action was taken since it was an accident. Now imagine what happens if you use screenshot monitoring software regularly.

Confidential data, such as web banking details or health information might be exposed.

What's good: At WorkTime, we offer an effective replacement to the outdated screenshots monitoring and keystrokes recording. Instead of simply capturing screen content, we give you the actual numbers, how productive the screens are, what is on every screen, what is visible and what is in the background. Non-invasive monitoring saves tons of time when analyzing and creates a solid base for you to make right decisions for your business.

"Once we applied WorkTime it became clear that attendance and active time of our working from home employees is pretty poor. Thanks to WorkTime we were able to achieve instant improvement!"– UK, bank.

5. Security risk, potential legal and incompatibility issues

Software that records screenshots and keystrokes commonly compromises data security and invades privacy. These features can’t be used in the healthcare and banking environments. HIPAA compliant monitoring software doesn’t include screenshots and keystrokes because HIPAA deals with protected health information. Keystroke monitoring poses employees at risk of their personal data leaks or sharing. It may reveal their banking, healthcare or family life information, causing negative responses that destroy your reputation or scare your clients away. In the case of screenshots and keylogging monitoring software, the risk of data misuse or human rights becomes high, potentially creating legal issues. Additionally, keystrokes and screenshots features might interfere with an antivirus, preventing the monitoring software from operating properly. An example below shows what happened due to improper employee monitoring functionality use.

$90,000 stolen from a banking account

A Florida businessman filed a suit against Bank of America after unknown hackers gained unauthorized access into his account and stole $90,000, recording keystrokes. An investigation found that his computer had been infected with malicious software that captures screenshots, records every keystroke, and sends this information to malicious users over the Internet. The hackers got hold of his username and password, and the rest is history.

Conclusion

Using screenshot monitoring and keystrokes recording might potentially create legal issues. It might violate employee privacy, producing uncertain, impossible to analyze results. And the actual questions here are:

What are your business goals?

What do you want to achieve by applying monitoring in your company?

If this is employee productivity you want to increase, then there is no need in recording keystrokes or monitoring employee screens content.

At WorkTime, we know it very well based on the feedback from our customers, whom we have been listening to very attentively for 20+ years. WorkTime lets you avoid common data security, privacy and legal issues. It doesn’t provoke objections, causing no conflicts within your team. The software helps you analyze and increase productivity without wasting time or money. With noninvasive employee monitoring software that doesn’t record screenshots and keystrokes, you don’t have to worry about privacy breaches. When considering employee monitoring, the decision to go for noninvasive monitoring software should be at the top of the list.

"At WorkTime, we work on providing effective, socially responsible employee monitoring. The main focus of our product is to transparently and effectively increase employee productivity and engagement, improve discipline and attendance, and increase active time."

– Kirill Nesterenko, CEO at WorkTime

WorkTime - a good solution for your business

Monitor & maintain a good work environment with WorkTime, an ethical, socially responsible and effective employee monitoring software. It offers non-invasive monitoring that protects employee privacy. It’s reliable, easy to use and completely safe. Why choose Worktime? At WorkTime, we offer monitoring that is:

Safe, allowing no sensitive data leakage

Ethical, requiring no invasion to employee privacy

Transparent and business oriented

Effective: you get all numbers at a glance

Focused on employee productivity, attendance and active time monitoring

WorkTime saves your time, money, and helps maintain your working processes more effectively.

So, if you are considering applying employee monitoring in your company or department and if you are leaning towards non-invasive monitoring software, WorkTime is ready to be at the top of your list as the only on the market offering effective and safe employee monitoring.