Christina Estes/KJZZ

An employee working in the KJZZ newsroom.

More companies are changing the way they evaluate employees. Recently, IBM joined Accenture and General Electric by overhauling or eliminating the traditional annual reviews. Company leaders determined the time, money and effort spent on annual reviews wasn’t paying off with improved performance.

Rather than get rid of the annual review at HomeSmart International, Chief Operating Officer Ashley Bowers added more reviews.

“Managers looked at me like I had 17 heads,” she recalled with a laugh.

At HomeSmart’s corporate headquarters in Scottsdale, Bowers directs managers to hold monthly, quarterly and semi-annual meetings with employees to give and receive feedback.

“You can stop all of the water cooler talk, the drama that goes on in organizations by maintaining that open dialogue,” she said. “So it really ends up impacting our bottom line. We don’t have wasted training dollars. We don’t high turnover.”

Bowers said her company still gives annual raises while the Wall Street Journal reports some companies are considering increases at different times throughout the year.

In a 2014 survey by professional services firm Deloitte, nearly 60 percent of executives said their current review process was not an effective use of anyone’s time.