“Feedback” is the work most often used when talking about formal or informal appraisal interviews and whilst this is an obvious situation for feedback, there are other situations where giving feedback is an important part of the process such as coaching and mentoring. That is guiding and helping staff to learn and gain skills either in a recognised coaching situation or in day to day working contacts.
There are more ways of providing feedback than simply by sitting-down discussions between manager and subordinate. For example, a task that helps people learn by experience or gain a better idea of strengths and weaknesses or even a psychometric questionnaire for self-analysis can give valuable insights.
Feedback helps employees to answer the questions about themselves and their performance. It may be that employees get the wrong idea about what their managers think of them and their work (especially when the manager is often busy and harassed). Employees without feedback can be underrating or overrating their work performance.
However, poor feedback is worse than none at all. If a manager’s comments are seen is inaccurate or biased or just plain unkind then the impact on performance is going to be negative rather than the positive learning effect that feedback should have.