The time in the business world where managers and employees face, often with anxiety, year-end performance appraisals.

FORBES: How To Make Year-End Performance Appraisals A Constructive, Not Demotivating, Event

Give them a clearly-defined job, subject them to rigorous performance appraisals, and some good might come of it.

ECONOMIST: Management consultants and their clients

Putting your best effort into performance appraisals will result in benefits exponential to the time spent during the process.

FORBES: How To Make Performance Reviews Relevant

Employees at SumAll, a Manhattan data-analytics company, can click on a shared drive to peruse investor agreements, company financials, performance appraisals, hiring decisions and employee pay, along with each worker's equity and bonuses.

WSJ: Transparency at the Office: Psst...This Is What Your Co-Worker Is Paid

Rather than automate the year-end performance management process (which is widely hated and questionable in value), Work.com is designed to be used by employees, teams, and managers on a regular basis for goal setting, communication of goals, recognition, rewards, and yes, ultimately, performance appraisals.

FORBES: Work.com Redefines what HR Software Is

We practice tough love at my ad agency, where we are ramping up efforts to coach individuals personally and professionally by offering fair, honest appraisals of their performance and then rewarding them accordingly.

FORBES: Growing Up When 'Everyone Wins,' How Do Kids Learn to Win?

And one academic review of more than 600 employee-feedback studies found that two-thirds of appraisals had zero or even negative effects on employee performance after the feedback was given.

WSJ: Performance Reviews Lose Steam