"The purpose of the review is to make sure the manager is doing his job with the employee, knowing what's going on in the employee's work, having an interest, offering to help, seeing where the employee and the company's interests can be aligned."

If performance reviews were that useful, why are they done only once a year? I feel like this should be a weekly conversation. Employee growth needs constant attention, but unfortunately it only happens for a handful of hours once a year.

My attitude is more pessimistic. I feel like these reviews are only useful for HR, so that they have a paper trail in place in the event that an employee needs to be terminated.

Edit: Just so my intentions are clear, I'm a cofounder of ididwork