AI and Workplace Welfare Plans

Using the 2022 wave of the Italian Permanent Census of Enterprises, this work studies whether firms that adopt artificial intelligence (AI) are also more likely to invest in workplace well-being and occupational health and safety plans. Relying on a direct survey-based measure of AI adoption, we estimate the association between AI adoption and worker welfare measures through inverse probability weighted regression adjustment to address selection-related issues. We find that AI-adopting firms are 15 and 14 percentage points more likely than non-adopting firms to introduce well-being and health and safety plans, respectively. The association with well-being plans is positive for all firm groups analysed and is broadly uniform across them. In contrast, the association with health and safety plans is more heterogeneous. More precisely, it is weaker for firms with stronger territorial commitment, larger size, hiring constraints, and in industrial sectors. The evidence suggests that firms tend to complement AI adoption with worker welfare measures, although this differs across welfare domains due to the organisational constraints associated with the introduction of H&S plans.