A leaving do for somebody moving to a better job is a happy occasion that most workplaces conduct with the atmosphere of a mild bereavement.
Part of that is the format, which is inherited from retirements and does not fit. The rest is that nobody has decided what the event is for.
Match the tone to the reason
The single decision that makes a leaving do work, and it takes ten seconds to make.
Leaving for a better job. This is a promotion and it should feel like one. Congratulations, not commiserations. Somebody who has worked hard and got somewhere should not spend their last evening being told the place will fall apart without them.
Leaving for a change of direction. Curiosity is the right register. People are genuinely interested and mostly do not ask.
Leaving because they were unhappy. Tricky, and the answer is to let them set the tone. A small drink with the people they liked, if they want one. Nothing formal.
Leaving in difficult circumstances. Scale down and follow their lead entirely. A formal send-off imposed on somebody in a bad situation is about the organisation making itself feel better.
Most awkward leaving dos are a mismatch between one of these and the format used.
Seven about the occasion, five about the gift
The occasion gets the larger share because that is where the failures actually happen. Almost nobody remembers a disappointing leaving present; everybody remembers a leaving do held at a time half the team could not come to.
Hold it at a time everybody can come
A Friday evening excludes people with childcare, which is a specific and identifiable group and frequently includes people who worked most closely with the person leaving. A lunchtime or a late afternoon includes almost everybody.
Let them choose the venue
The guest of honour is the one person who has to be there for the whole thing. Somebody who does not drink, or who hates the pub everybody defaults to, will spend their own send-off waiting for it to end.
Keep it to about ninety minutes
Leaving dos that run long become an ordinary night out with an increasingly stranded guest of honour who cannot leave their own party. Ending it while it is still good is a decision somebody has to make in advance.
Do the speech early
Not at the end, when half the room has gone and the person leaving has spent the whole evening waiting for it. Early also means they can relax afterwards, which is the entire point of the occasion.
Two speeches, both short
One from a manager, one from somebody who actually worked with them day to day. The second is the one people want and the one most often left out.
Include remote colleagues properly, or say plainly that you cannot
A video call held up to a noisy pub is worse than not trying. A separate five-minute call, done well and at a sensible hour, is better than a token gesture nobody can hear.
Invite the people who have already left
Former colleagues who were part of the same years. It costs a few extra drinks, it is almost never done, and for anybody with a long tenure it is consistently the best part of the evening.
A handover that means their last week is not firefighting
Not a gift in any conventional sense, and the thing departing colleagues most often say they wish they had been given. Somebody taking their handover seriously two weeks early is worth more than anything collected for.
Something specific to them, not to the company
Branded merchandise as a leaving gift is a strange choice: a souvenir of a place they are actively leaving, carrying a logo they will not want on their new desk.
Something for what comes next
If they are moving city, moving industry, taking time off or going travelling, the gift can point forwards rather than backwards. It is also the easiest way to prove that somebody listened to what they are actually doing.
Something practical they will actually use
Unromantic and reliably correct. A collection produces a real amount of money and spending it on one good thing they will use daily beats spending it on a gesture.
A game with the team painted in and the projects as levels
For a long tenure only, and it is the subject of the section below. The projects, the office moves, the colleagues who left years ago and the thing they were known for: a record of a working life rather than a memento of a building they are leaving.
The card is doing the work
Worth recognising, because it changes what the gift needs to be.
The card that has gone round the office, with everybody writing something, is the emotional content of the whole occasion. It is the thing that gets kept, taken out years later, and remembered. The object beside it is secondary.
So encourage people to write something specific rather than "good luck". A sentence about a particular thing the person did is worth more than a page of generalities, which is the same principle that makes recognition land at all, discussed in employee recognition gift ideas.
Collecting money without annoying everybody
The gift is rarely the problem. The collection is.
One organiser, one message, one suggested amount. Repeated reminders are what generate resentment.
Silent opt-out. Not everybody can spare it and nobody wants to say so. A collection with a visible list of who contributed is a small act of coercion.
Say what it is for. People give more readily to something specific than to a pot.
Do not collect from people who barely knew them. It is a tax on being in the same building.
For a long tenure
Somebody leaving after ten or fifteen years is a different case, and it is the one where a commissioned piece makes sense.
They have an actual history: the projects, the office moves, the reorganisations, the colleagues who left years ago, the thing they are known for. That is material a generic gift cannot touch.
A short piece with the team painted in as characters, the projects as levels, and the running jokes as the content is a record of a working life rather than a memento of a job title. The tiers are £99 for a single level and £349 for a multi-level build with a cast, and the cast is the point, because the colleagues in it are what make it about the years rather than the role.
Two practical notes. Photographs of colleagues need individual agreement with an easy way to decline, and nobody should have to explain why. And keep it short, because it will be opened at the do with people watching, which is the constraint described in how to actually give someone a game.
Keep the content affectionate rather than pointed. A leaving gift that is a series of jokes at somebody's expense, opened publicly, is difficult to react to well.
Afterwards
The thing nobody does and everybody means to: stay in touch.
Most leaving-do promises evaporate within a month. If you actually want to, arrange something specific before they go rather than saying you will. A date beats an intention.
What this means
Match the tone to the reason they are leaving.
Do the speech early and keep it short.
Silent opt-out on the collection.
And write something specific in the card. That is the part they keep.
The collection is the part that goes wrong most often, and it has its own guide in how to split the cost of a group gift.
For a retirement rather than a move, retirement gift ideas for a colleague, and for the wider question of workplace recognition, employee recognition gift ideas.
