eee Austria

What it is

eee Austria's e-learning content service is a library of ready-made online courses for employee training, plus a production service for courses built to a company's own needs. It is aimed at employers and training departments that need staff to complete workplace training, from compulsory briefings to voluntary qualification. The company behind it is eee Austria international projects GmbH, which writes its name as "triple e" Austria, the three e's standing for education, e-solutions and e-government. Its home page says it is headquartered in Graz, Austria, and operates in more than 20 countries worldwide. The course library is one of three flagship products the home page lists, under the line "Practice-oriented online courses for self-directed learning", next to a school administration system and its vocational education and training work.

The standard course library

The e-learning content page offers a choice of "over 200 courses on a variety of topics for targeted employee training, compulsory briefings, or voluntary education and qualification options." Those three uses describe how an employer would deploy the library. Targeted training covers a skill gap in a team or role. Compulsory briefings are the mandatory instruction many employers must give and document, such as safety or compliance training. Voluntary education gives staff courses they can take for their own development.

The courses are grouped into eight standard libraries:

• Compliance
• Health, safety and environment (HSE)
• IT users
• Management
• Productivity and soft skills
• Security skills
• Technology
• Finance and economics

The page introduces the range as "Soft skills, leadership, compliance… No matter the topic", and describes the standard courses as practice-oriented and attractively designed. They are built for self-directed learning, so an employee works through a course alone and at their own pace rather than in a scheduled class, which suits staff spread across shifts or sites.

A buyer does not have to take the library on trust. The page invites visitors to "Try some sample e-learning courses in our Actibook format free of charge", with icons that open sample courses. Trying a sample is the most direct way to judge the production style and the interaction before talking to the company.

Custom courses

The second half of the service is individual production. The page says that in many cases "off the rack" will not be enough, and that eee Austria aims "to come up with online courses and training units that are tailored to your needs as closely as possible." That includes "adjusting the contents to your corporate identity", so a custom course can carry the client's branding.

The page names product introductions, compliance and soft skill courses as examples of what it builds to order. Its promise is to help clients reach their training and qualification goals "in a cost-effective, timely and successful way", and it credits efficient production to the company's experience, "which has allowed us to optimize our processes for efficient production." A company can therefore mix the two: standard courses for common topics, custom units where its own products, rules or brand matter.

The company behind the courses

eee Austria is larger than a course studio. The home page describes approximately 170 employees working in 10 subsidiary companies, a management team, and approximately 100 external digital education experts within the eee group. It calls itself a leading provider in digital education and education technologies, listing a Learning Management System, e-learning and e-examinations, as well as school administration solutions (an Education Management Information System) and digital safety and security management covering fire prevention, facility safety and data protection protocols. It also describes itself as one of the leading companies in transferring the Austrian vocational education and training approach, dual education, to other countries.

Its portfolio is split into education and training, e-government, e-solutions and consulting services. Its clients fall into three groups on the home page: public authorities, educational institutions, and big companies and SMEs. The projects it highlights show the scale of its public sector work:

• In Indonesia it upgraded a vocational training center in Medan, North Sumatra, and delivered digital learning solutions for all 301 vocational training centers of the Indonesian Ministry of Manpower.
• In Albania it trained more than 3,800 teachers and administrative staff on digital skills and on using e-learning in pre-university education.
• In Tajikistan it won a World Bank financed project to implement a Human Resource Management Information System for the Tajik Tax Authority, built to serve all 2,400 users.
• In Laos it carried out a feasibility study on technology cooperation between Laos and Austria in support of e-government goals.
• In the Federated States of Micronesia it started a project supporting skills and employability.
• In Africa, where the home page names the lack of transport as the biggest barrier to education, it says it is committed to widening access through mobile solutions and education services.

Named projects on the home page also include BILDUNG.AT, European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (DG ECHO) and Frontex. For a buyer of the course library, this background matters mainly as a sign that the company runs large training programs for government bodies and can handle the documentation and quality demands that come with them.

Prices and buying

The site publishes no prices for the standard library or for custom production. Buying runs through a contact form on the home page, which asks for name, email, country, subject and message, or through the office in Graz. The site does not say which formats or learning platforms the courses are delivered in beyond the Actibook samples, so a company that wants the courses inside its own LMS should raise that early.

Who it suits

The service suits employers that need a stock of workplace courses quickly, especially for compliance, HSE, IT user and security skills, where the eight libraries map directly onto common training obligations. It fits training departments that want to cover compulsory briefings and also offer voluntary courses from the same supplier, and companies that would like a few custom courses in their own corporate identity alongside the catalog. Public bodies and larger organizations may value the company's record with ministries, tax authorities and EU agencies.

It is a weaker fit for an individual learner, since the service is sold to organizations, and for a company that wants to compare prices online and buy self-service, since everything goes through direct contact. Teams that need a very large, broad catalog covering niche technical subjects will find 200 courses a focused library rather than an encyclopedic one.