If you think you work for one of the best companies in the industry, submit a review of your employer online and they could be recognised in a new list of the top places to work in travel.

Review website WorkAdvisor has announced it will use the anonymous reviews logged on its site to compile a list of the 10 travel businesses rated most highly by current and former employees, with the winning companies to be revealed at an evening ceremony in conjunction with TTG Media in February.

The platform, which was launched in July to offer greater transparency for prospective employees, already features 200 reviews of more than 20 different travel companies. These span various sectors of the industry including airlines, tour operators and travel agencies, with users rating companies against five different criteria including how sociable the company is and how supportive of career development.

“Our aim with WorkAdvisor is to redress the balance in the recruitment process,” said managing director Paul Moran. “At the moment, employers have a huge amount of information on candidates but prospective employees have little to go on. Staff are much more likely to stay if they understand the environment and know what will be expected of them before they start,” he added.

“But we’re not asking for people to come on the site and criticise their employer, and in fact around 85% of reviews are positive. We remove any reviews which are vindictive or personal – but in reality we’ve hardly had to do that,” he emphasised.

The website is also to undergo a revamp in January which will improve functionality and give a more holistic view of what a company would be like to work for.

Moran said the new “Top 10 Travel Companies To Work For” initiative was the next logical step for WorkAdvisor.

“This new list is designed to recognise the best working environments in the industry and will not only give current employees the opportunity to champion their place of work, but will also allow potential employees to get a better understanding of what life is like within these fantastic businesses”, he said.

“We hope employers will really get behind this, and if they’re confident about their employee satisfaction levels, will encourage their team to shout about it”

Paul Moran

The Top 10 will not only recognise the highfliers overall, but also recognise the best-rated individual employer in each of the five criteria by which companies are reviewed. “This will enable us to recognise the most sociable places to work, for example, and those companies that are the very best at motivating their workforce, which may or may not be the same companies that win overall,” Moran explained.

The list will recognise smaller companies as well as large, but a company must have been anonymously reviewed by at least 10 individuals before it can join the list.

Moran said it takes less than five minutes to create an account and submit an anonymous review on Workadvisor.co.uk, with users asked five simple questions, with an option to give additional qualitative feedback.

Since launching in July, WorkAdvisor has been making a £5 donation to one of three charities when a user submits their first company review. In the month of December, the £5 donations will be made to Naomi House & JacksPlace hospices, which provide expert care to life-limited and life-threatened children and their families. To encourage users to review companies that don’t yet have any reviews, WorkAdvisor will this month increase the charitable donation from £5 to £20 every time a company is reviewed for the first time – which is enough for an hour of nursing care for a poorly child at Naomi House.