AI Is Changing the Capabilities—and Economics—of Employee Safety and Security

What if protecting employees could generate measurable financial returns?

Until recently, that would have sounded impossible. Organizations have long viewed employee safety and security as a necessary cost of doing business: essential, but difficult to justify in purely economic terms and rarely considered a source of measurable business value.

Artificial intelligence is beginning to change that equation. Just as AI transformed cybersecurity from a reactive discipline into one capable of anticipating and preventing attacks, it is now reshaping the emerging field of AI-powered Preventative Personal Security (PPS). More importantly, it is making it possible to quantify the economic value of preventing harm before emergencies occur.

That may represent an inflection point—not just for one company, but for an entire category.

A recently completed four-month Ernst & Young (EY) assessment evaluated the economic impact of deploying an AI-powered Preventative Personal Security platform across a large workforce. Rather than examining employee safety as a moral or compliance issue, it evaluated whether helping prevent incidents before they escalate creates measurable organizational value.

The answer was yes.

The study concluded that organizations offering the evaluated platform could realize annual savings of approximately $181 per employee, increasing to as much as $280 per employee as employee awareness and adoption mature. Just as importantly, EY notes that its methodology is intentionally conservative and excludes several difficult-to-quantify sources of value, suggesting the full economic impact may ultimately be larger.

The broader significance isn’t the specific savings estimate. It’s that AI-powered Preventative Personal Security can now be evaluated as a business investment rather than merely a security expense or employee benefit.

The reason is straightforward.

Traditional personal security focuses primarily on responding after an incident has already occurred. AI-powered Preventative Personal Security shifts attention much earlier in the timeline. Its objective is to deter incidents whenever possible, identify elevated risk before it escalates, accelerate intervention, and reduce the severity of incidents that cannot be prevented.

Those capabilities fundamentally change the economics of employee safety.

Preventing or mitigating incidents reduces direct costs such as medical expenses, legal claims, insurance losses, and operational disruption. Equally important, employees who feel safer are more likely to remain productive, engaged, and present at work. The EY assessment models both categories of value, combining direct incident-related savings with broader workforce benefits, including productivity and reduced absenteeism.

However, these economic outcomes are not inherent to every product marketed as “personal security.” They depend on the capabilities of the platform itself.

Generating measurable ROI requires far more than providing a faster way to contact emergency services. It depends on preventing incidents whenever possible, identifying elevated risk early, orchestrating timely intervention, protecting user privacy so employees are willing to engage before situations become emergencies, and achieving broad adoption across the workforce. The EY assessment itself identifies privacy, employee awareness, and adoption as meaningful contributors to value creation.

This is precisely why the EY assessment matters. It suggests that AI-powered Preventative Personal Security is evolving from an emerging technology into a management discipline with measurable economic outcomes.

History offers several parallels. Cybersecurity was once viewed primarily as an IT expense. Today it is recognized as a board-level strategic priority because its value extends far beyond technology. Workplace wellness programs, mental health benefits, and telemedicine followed similar paths—from optional initiatives to mainstream investments once organizations recognized both their human and economic returns.

AI-powered Preventative Personal Security may now be approaching the same transition.

The shift reflects a broader reality about work itself. Employee safety no longer begins and ends at the workplace. Risks increasingly arise during commutes, business travel, parking facilities, neighborhoods, and other aspects of employees’ daily lives. Regardless of where an incident occurs, employers often bear the consequences through absenteeism, reduced productivity, healthcare costs, turnover, legal exposure, and operational disruption. As the EY assessment observes, helping employees be—and feel—more secure is not only the right thing to do, but also makes measurable economic sense.

For boards of directors, CEOs, CFOs, CHROs, Chief Security Officers, and General Counsel, this should prompt a different conversation. Employee safety can no longer be viewed solely as a compliance obligation or operating expense. Increasingly, it should be evaluated as an investment in human capital—one capable of strengthening organizational resilience and business performance.

The most important conclusion from the EY assessment may not be the estimated dollars saved per employee. It is that AI-powered Preventative Personal Security has reached a point where it can be evaluated using the same financial discipline applied to other enterprise investments.

When organizations can demonstrate that preventing harm before emergencies occur delivers measurable business value, employee safety is no longer simply a cost to manage. It becomes a strategic capability that protects people, strengthens organizational resilience, and improves business performance. That may ultimately prove to be AI’s most significant contribution to employee safety.

About Doron Kempel

Doron Kempel is Chairman and CEO of Bond, an AI-powered Preventative Personal Security company. A veteran technology entrepreneur, he previously founded SimpliVity, acquired by Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and Diligent Technologies, acquired by IBM. Earlier in his career, Kempel served as Deputy Commander of Israel’s elite Sayeret Matkal special forces unit. He holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and degrees in Law and Philosophy from Tel Aviv University.