Now we’re getting into the silly season (following Midsummer Madness) and before the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness descend, my thoughts have been turning to those irritating features of work life that really annoy everyone. The most obvious is that workplace institution that makes so many people cringe: the annual (or semi-annual) appraisal. Has there ever been anything so universally privately detested that has so little positive value and yet it continues to exist in the majority of workplaces? Lucy Kellaway, writing in The Financial Times last week argued that they serve no useful purpose and should be scrapped.