Being in a management position, I find that annual reviews are not as beneficial

Being in a management position, I find that annual reviews are not as beneficial as we would like to believe. I have gone into them in hopes that the communication will help the employees to improve and get better at their job. What I have found, at least with my particular employees, is that they expect to go into these reviews and get glowing comments. If they get anything other than glowing comments and a pay raise, they get mad at me. I just don’t feel like the performance reviews are beneficial to anyone. If I do them the way the employees want, then they don’t get a true picture of how they are performing or what needs to be done. I honestly think that if employers did a honest performance review, there would be more turnover in companies because the employees would not like to the truth.
From an employee perspective, I think performance reviews can be deceiving. As I stated above, if the employers don’t state their opinions truthfully, employees might think they are doing better than they really are. I have also been in the position where I have had a positive review but then got passed up for a new position due to nepotism. This led me to feel like the boss was feeding me what she thought I wanted to hear and my performance was not going to make a difference in any promotions.