Extended Enterprise Training vs. Employee Training: What’s the difference?

The learning management system (LMS) can be broken down into different segments. Two of these segments are employee training and extended enterprise training. They are both essential, depending on the needs of the organization. In this article, we will focus on the difference between employee training vs. extended enterprise training and utilizing an LMS to help you reach your training objectives.

Employee Training

Employee training is the training of a workforce within an organization. This type of training can cover HR policies, CPR courses, or compliance training courses. There will also be training courses to elevate employees skills and promote career development.

Extended Enterprise Training

Extended Enterprise Training is the training among associates, partners or franchises. An example of this is getting a burger at your regularly visited fast food restaurant. Now let’s say you go out of town on a trip, and see that fast food joint when you land at the airport. You would most likely think if you order your usual burger it would look and taste the same. Extended enterprise training is how that is made possible. Across the board, the employees at these locations are trained to create your order the same way. Extended enterprise training guarantees consistent services and products and most importantly happy and returning customers. 

So which is the best fit for your organization? Employee training and extended enterprise training both have distinct differences and characteristics. 

• Employee training mainly focuses on your employees career development and skills or compliance training. 
• Whereas extended enterprise training primarily focuses on training people on sales, services and products. Going back to the fast food restaurant analogy, the focus is to ensure all the employees are properly trained in preparing the burger, rather than the career development of the kitchen crew. 

Management

• Generally, employee training is managed by your HR or by your L&D (learning and development) department.
• The franchise owner or associate relationship managers typically oversee and manage the course enrolment in extended enterprise training.

Roles

• Employee training pertains to training your staff on their role in one organization. 
• Extended enterprise training possesses multiple relationships to a network. A chef may work full time at one franchise, and then work on the weekend at another location within the organization.

Training Content

• Employee training is HR policy content such as training on how to ensure a positive work environment, compliance training, knowledge tests and instructional workplace videos.
• Extended enterprise training informs associates of their services and products through social media, data, reports etc.

Your Business Goals

• The core or reason of the business’s existence is not necessarily employee training. Employees should be trained to help build on their own skills and that will elevate the organization as a whole.
• The core of extended enterprise training is to train individuals to understand and do what is essential to the organization’s main goal. There will be specific practices as to how to achieve the mission.

A helpful question to keep in mind is: Does your organization require you to train your employees within a traditional business model for a specific role or do you require a training solution that helps your organization host multiple audiences?

If you are still unsure about the difference between employee training or extended enterprise training and what your business requires, request a call and a product specialist will reach out to you shortly.