Employee monitoring apps (i.e., 'bossware') have become increasingly affordable and accessible on the open market. Apps such as Interguard and Teramind provide companies with a powerful degree of surveillance about workers, including keystroke logging, location and browser monitoring, and even webcam usage. However, as homes have become offices, and laptops and smartphones are used for business, school, and entertainment, the increasing surveillance of ‘remote work’ blurs the boundaries between work and personal spaces. Drawing from an interdisciplinary study on the proliferation of employee monitoring applications (EMAs) in a nascent era of ‘remote work’, this paper presents findings from a survey examining Canadian companies’ adoption of EMAs. The findings identify the most prevalent economic sectors that 'bossware' is currently being used within, the rationalities that underpin the ongoing use of EMAs in Canada (such as COVID-19, ‘productivity/efficiency’, ‘cybersecurity’, and ‘health/wellness’), and the features of the most sought after 'bossware' apps for Canadian companies (such as time tracking, website tracking, and keystroke logging). We conclude with an analysis of how dominant surveillance discourses drive the adoption of monitoring practices, including how they inform the anticipated benefits of surveillance for the management of remote work and digital labour.

中文翻译：

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加拿大的工作场所监控：关于员工监控应用程序的采用和使用的调查

员工监控应用程序（即“老板软件”）在公开市场上变得越来越便宜且易于使用。Interguard 和 Teramind 等应用程序为公司提供了对员工的强大监控，包括击键记录、位置和浏览器监控，甚至网络摄像头的使用情况。然而，随着家庭变成了办公室，笔记本电脑和智能手机被用于商业、学校和娱乐，对“远程工作”的日益监控模糊了工作和个人空间之间的界限。本文借鉴了关于“远程工作”新生时代员工监控应用程序 (EMA) 激增的跨学科研究，提出了一项调查加拿大公司采用 EMA 情况的调查结果。调查结果确定了目前使用“bossware”的最普遍的经济部门，以及支持加拿大持续使用 EMA 的合理性（例如 COVID-19、“生产力/效率”、“网络安全”和“健康/健康”），以及加拿大公司最受追捧的“老板软件”应用程序的功能（例如时间跟踪、网站跟踪和击键记录）。最后，我们分析了主流监控话语如何推动监控实践的采用，包括它们如何告知监控对远程工作和数字劳动力管理的预期好处。