Digitalization, artificial intelligence, and the continuous transformation of the working world are challenges that affect companies, employees, and their representatives alike. On the one hand, new technologies offer enormous opportunities – for efficiency, innovation, and competitiveness. On the other hand, they also raise concerns: about loss of control, job displacement, unfair surveillance, or ethically questionable decisions made by machines.
Especially in times of profound change, collaboration between social partners becomes essential: company leaderships, workers councils, and trade unions are called upon to jointly find sustainable paths for the future. But how can a real dialogue at eye level succeed when the starting perspectives are so different?
Value-based Engineering (VBE) offers an innovative methodological framework that structures and strengthens exactly this kind of cooperation. VBE makes values tangible, involves all relevant stakeholders, and helps to develop technology-driven solutions that are both economically viable and socially responsible.
Three elements of VBE are central to fostering this dialogue.
A Common Vocabulary through the VBE Value Language
One of the biggest hurdles in dialogue between management, employees, and technical experts is often the lack of a shared understanding – especially when it comes to abstract issues like ethics, fairness, or accountability. VBE addresses this with a three-level value ontology:
- Core values, such as transparency, fairness, security and privacy from the top leve.
- These values are further specified through value qualities within the respective context.
- In konkreten IT-Systemen geht es nunmehr um deren Eigenschaften, die diese Wertqualitäten messbar umsetzen. Diese werden auch Wertdispositionen bezeichnet.
This structured value language creates clarity: it allows concerns and priorities to be expressed in a way that everyone can understand. Values take a shape that allows for clean cut discussion – without losing their integrity.
Involving Operational Stakeholders through the Value Register
Successful companies rely on everyone pulling in the same direction. VBE is based on participatory processes: representatives from different areas – such as business units, IT, HR, the works council, and company leadership – are involved from the outset.
Together, they develop what is known as a Value Register: a structured collection of potential ethical, social, or legal risks in the context of a specific digital initiative.
The Value Register functions like a specialized risk list – it identifies where and how a technology might create social tensions, ranging from unfair evaluation systems to lack of accessibility or employee overload in day-to-day work. Where necessary, the Value Register is supplemented by legal requirements (e.g., from labor law or the GDPR).
The Value Register creates transparency for the social partners. The development process ensures that all voices – including critical ones – are heard, allowing further discussions between the social partners to take place on a solid foundation.
Concrete, Verifiable Measures for a Joint Solution
Concrete requirements and recommendations for action can be derived from the Value Register using the VBE methodology. These are formulated as so-called EVRs (Ethical Value Requirements): goals that an IT system must fulfill. These may refer to system properties (e.g., the explainability of decisions) or to organizational aspects (e.g., employee training and development).
This results in technical and organizational measures that address both ethical requirements and economic conditions. These measures provide an excellent basis for works agreements or other forms of consensus – they are transparent, concrete, and comprehensible.
Collaboration For Good Compromise – With Structure
VBE is not a replacement for the traditional dialogue between social partners, but a complement. It helps make complex technologies like AI tangible, brings the right people to the table, and structures the process toward sustainable decisions.
The goal: solutions that work for everyone. Companies benefit from greater acceptance and innovation, employees from transparency and participation, and trade unions from a well-founded basis for social balance.
In this way, digitalization doesn’t become a threat – but a shared project for the future.
