Employees hate performance reviews. Supervisors hate performance reviews. Maybe you’re better off just dropping reviews altogether. Maybe.

Every few years or so, a management movement surfaces to push supervisors to stop doing the traditional annual performance review. OK, but what would take its place?

Let’s say you decided that to kick off 2012, you were going to stop doing performance reviews for each employee. After all, just about everyone hates them, and a lot of people argue that the typical review doesn’t lead to improved performance.

There, that was easy. Done.

Now what? What, if anything, would take the place of the review?

An academic study cited in the Wall Street Journal notes that some companies get along fine without annual reviews, but that supervisors in those companies probably ended up putting more work and time into appraising performance than they did when their companies were doing traditional reviews.

What led to more work? Without traditional reviews to rest on, supervisors had to make sure to schedule and conduct frequent feedback sessions – as often as once a week — so employees always knew where they stood. And at the sessions, the employees were expected to provide their own feedback and complaints about the supervisors.

On top of that, supervisors had to keep good records on employees’ failures to meet goals and expectations. Without such records, a firing would result in an almost-guaranteed lawsuit against the employer.

The good news: Most of the employers who dropped the traditional review said they had low turnover, high employee morale and stronger relationships between managers and employees.

So, the no-review approach can work, but no one should think “no review” means “no work.”