About us:
We who stand behind Meritios believe in a society where every citizen of working age has the right conditions to provide for themselves. We see that vocational higher education plays a very important role as a form of education, because it offers the opportunity to retrain within a specific field, regardless of your previous education and of where in life you are. An important part of a vocational education is the LIA internship (Lärande i Arbete).
Our contribution is to provide a platform that optimises the process connected to the LIA internship at vocational colleges, since we believe that a higher quality in the LIA internship gives students even better conditions for employment after they have completed their studies.
Our mission is to make it possible for vocational colleges, students and companies to have an optimal experience of the LIA internship, where…
- Companies get a LIA intern who is a good match for their competence needs
- Students get a LIA internship that gives them new credentials and experience, as well as contacts that can lead to future employment
- The vocational college gets a standardised, quality-assured process around the LIA internship that is easy to monitor and follow up
What is Meritios?
Meritios is a Swedish-designed SaaS platform for vocational colleges that want to standardise and digitalise the process around the LIA internship and the administration of company contacts.
Why does Meritios exist?
In order to be attractive in today's labour market, employees must constantly work on their own further development. One form of development that is growing around the world among younger people who do not see a long university education as the path to their dream job — or for those who want to "retrain" — is vocational higher education.
An important part of vocational higher education as a form of study is the LIA internship (Lärande i Arbete), where the student, during one or more periods of the study programme, works in practice at a workplace with the profession the education leads to. Statistics in Sweden show that over 50% of all students find employment after graduating at one of the businesses where they did their internship.
Once upon a time…
The idea for Meritios comes from one of the co-founders, Karin W Nordén. After having been a supervisor for LIA interns for three years, she still had no clear information about when in time which classes/competences were going out on internship – and how she could communicate with the students.
– I packaged my idea into a simple application for clear communication between school, students and companies. When I presented it to the school I was in contact with, they got going on the idea – but they also wanted a solution for efficient handling of company contacts – that is, companies interested in taking on LIA students. A couple of weeks later we had established a focus group to map the LIA process and the other needs. At the same time I found my now two co-founders, who are really good at turning requirements into solutions. After a few months we could deliver the first version of Meritios!
