Yearly Reviews? Try Weekly - Accustomed to Updates, New Generation of Workers Craves Regular Feedback discusses a movement to quarterly, weekly, or daily feedback sessions, in part to accommodate the need for younger workers to have instant feedback. It discusses the pros and cons of more frequent reviews and notes that software is available to help with this effort.

The article also notes that annual or semi-annual reviews are still the norm and reiterates the importance of having an effective review:

For most companies, employee reviews are still an annual rite of passage. Some 51% of companies conduct formal performance reviews annually, while 41% of firms do semi-annual appraisals, according to a 2011 survey of 500 companies by the Corporate Executive Board Co., a research and advisory firm.

And increasing frequency may not make much of a difference if the performance appraisals are ineffective to begin with, say some. 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. "Why is doing something stupid more often better than doing something stupid once a year?" asks Samuel A. Culbert, a professor at the Anderson School of Management at the University of California, Los Angeles and the co-author of the book "Get Rid of the Performance Review!"