Maximize Adoption in Extended Enterprise Learning
External learning is just as important for business outcomes as internal learning.
The only problem is that getting external learners to adopt and participate in training can be a bit like pulling teeth. In this guide, we’ll dive into how your business can maximize learning adoption in extended enterprise training.
What is extended enterprise learning?
Extended enterprise training, or external learning, refers to training and development initiatives beyond an organization’s internal workforce. It involves learning programs designed for external stakeholders like customers, partners, suppliers, and other third parties that interact with the organization. In many cases, the company’s whole business model rests on sharing and selling content.
The pitfalls of traditional LMS approaches to external learning
External learning faces a lot of the same pitfalls as traditional L&D, only with an added challenge: External users are less likely to engage with learning from an organization they’re not directly employed by. You can set aside formal timeslots for internal learners to meet their learning outcomes, but external learners have to be convinced to participate in training (they have their own needs and responsibilities, after all).
The challenge then becomes “why are extended learners unengaged and unmotivated to complete learning?” Traditional LMSs can create unintentional barriers to external learning, either because they make learners jump through multiple hoops or because learners are unsure if they’re in the right place or doing the right thing.
Jumping through hoops becomes an issue because traditional learning management systems (LMSs) don’t have external catalogs allowing users to get straight into learning. Many of them make users go somewhere else to launch learning or put gate content, so it requires a log in to unlock. For a lot of external users already short on time, this just turns them off from learning entirely. Simply put, if the content is hard to get to, they don’t use it.
Not only that, but external users can easily be turned off if learning isn’t clearly or obviously branded. If external learners need to complete learning for Company A, but the learning catalog takes them to content with the third-party branding of Company B, they may get confused. And if they’re confused about whether they should do it, they’re more likely not to do it at all.
On top of that, traditional learning programs often don’t make good use of L&D metrics. Many organizations measure things like course completions or learning satisfaction, but those don’t actually show what really matters: Learning impact.
How to drive adoption and usage in external learning
As recently as 2020, just 56% of companies said their extended enterprise learning initiatives were effective. That means almost half reported having ineffective external learning. So, to avoid this outcome, we’ve identified four best practices for you to follow to build external learning that has a big impact:
- Provide relevant content
- Leverage technology
- Provide continuous support
- Continuously optimize.
Provide relevant content
A lot of companies subscribe to the idea that creating more content is the answer to providing effective training, but that just overwhelms learners (especially external learners who don’t know where to start). Curating relevant content is a better method, because it’s personalized to specific learning needs.
If you segment your learners into different audiences (e.g., customers vs. suppliers), and run a training needs assessment for each group, you can identify what content is relevant to them. Identify your goals for these learners, assess what capabilities they have, the capabilities they’ll need in the future, and determine the best training to provide.
If customers are your target audience, your goal for them might be to understand a product or service. It may be that this customer has used a similar product before and has a basic understanding of how to use it, but is unaware of the nuances of your product. From here you can determine that the proper training to provide them might be instructional video tutorials or face-to-face implementation training.
Remember that training content needs to be updated on a regular basis as well. Eventually, you’ll have updates to your products, policies, or processes that external users will need. Be sure to regularly assess the need for your learning content so that your learning catalog is filled with meaningful learning that has real-world applications for your external users and their use cases.
Leverage technology
Most organizations use some kind of learning management system (LMS) or performance learning management system (PLMS) to assist in delivering learning. PLMSs are particularly well-placed when it comes to extended enterprise learning, because they can handle training for both internal and external learners from one centralized location. You can even have multiple external learners in different tenants that you can share content across (removing the need to manually copy-paste content for different use cases).
They can also do a lot of the heavy lifting of a training needs analysis for you, by assessing the current capabilities of your learners and assigning tailored learning content that is relevant to their specific needs. It streamlines the whole process for your HR and L&D teams, so they don’t have to spend hours building, assigning, assessing, and tracking external learning. You can also use the analytics a PLMS collects to make informed decisions about how to improve both learning experiences and adoption.
For example, a PLMS captures engagement and completion rates of content. If engagement and completions are high, external users are actively participating in learning. If engagement is low, however, then that indicates that your organization needs to improve its external content to motivate users to participate. Maybe learning isn’t relevant to users or it’s too dense. Either way, it’s data that’s useful to analyze in order to make more strategic decisions for future learning.
A PLMS addresses the performance aspect of learning in particular. A lot of external learning programs focus on content creation and pushing users towards more learning, but PLMSs worry about what people do and not what content they complete. They can measure training return on investment based on the goals you set for each external user group. For customers you want to train in your product, a PLMS can measure how training affected retention or uptake of the software. If executed well, 41% of companies reported that external training improved customer retention, and 55% said it improved customer relations.
Provide continuous support
External users can be “seasonal”, i.e., they don’t need to have continuous learning the way internal users do. Their training is short and sweet in comparison to internal learners, but that also contributes to a perceived irrelevance of learning. (Why put the effort into learning if you only need it for a short time?)
This is why onboarding external users to your external learning management system is crucial for ensuring that a) they understand how to use the learning system, and b) they understand the need for them to complete training. Onboarding could be as simple as a help center full of articles and videos, or as involved as a face-to-face training session on how to use the platform.
This is also the place to get that initial buy-in from learners: Make it clear how the learning program will improve users’ learning outcomes and address their specific needs and KPIs. For example, a customer will have a specific goal in mind to use your product or service, so you’ll need to demonstrate how your chosen extended enterprise LMS will help them achieve that goal.
Make sure you continue training and support beyond onboarding, just as you would for internal learners. Establish online forums or discussion groups where learners can interact, share insights, and create a sense of community. Having a place to collaborate and ask questions can increase engagement and encourage a sense of accountability to complete tasks. The idea is that this creates a learning culture where learners are consistently improving their knowledge and skills.
Continuously optimize
Track learner participation and progress within your extended enterprise learning system to see if external learners took up learning, and whether that learning was effective. Ideally you should see an uplift in how external learners are performing their goals, indicating learning ROI.
This is where L&D metrics like completion rates and employee engagement come in handy, too. It’s a pretty clear way to see how change adoption went—or didn’t—among your external user group. If learning content isn’t being completed then it could be that the content wasn’t relevant to learners’ specific development needs, and should be adjusted to something more tailored.
Don’t forget that optimization to improve engagement also includes clearly marking and branding your learning so external users know they’ve navigated to the right place. Make sure you’re making it obvious that the learning you direct users to is the learning they’re meant to be doing for your company.
Eventually, your business will have to adapt and evolve to changes in technology, standards, and processes, which means external learners will have to come for the ride as well. Make sure you regularly re-evaluate business goals and the role external learning has to play in your organizational strategy. The chances are you’ll have to update external learning content in line with business priorities and standards to give external users the most relevant learning experience.
Key takeaways
Getting learners to adopt training is hard, especially when those learners come from outside your business and don’t have the sense of urgency to complete training the way internal users do. It’s not impossible to create that sense of urgency, though. All learners want is training that is relevant to them and their learning and performance needs. It’s really as simple as that. It goes beyond demonstrating the potential benefits of training to them—you need to demonstrate how training addresses whatever significant challenges or pain points they have. And most importantly, don’t leave them high and dry after handing them some learning content. External users need continuous support and guidance to keep them engaged in learning, otherwise they won’t meet your desired learning outcomes.