Farewell Party Checklist (3 Weeks, 14 Steps)
Every step for organising a colleague's farewell party in three weeks, from the gift collection to the speech, with what to settle at each stage.
A farewell party is organised in secret, on a deadline nobody controls, with money collected from people who barely know each other. The hard parts are the collection, the speech and keeping it quiet — the venue is the easy bit. This checklist puts the fourteen steps in the order the leaving date forces on you.
- D-18
1.Set date and time
Anchor it to their actual last working day, not the notice-period end date — people often finish early with unused leave. An end-of-afternoon slot, 17:00 to 19:00, gets the highest turnout because nobody has to come back after dinner.
- D-14
2.Choose venue (room, restaurant, bar)
Decide on-site or off-site first: a meeting room costs nothing but needs HR or office-manager sign-off for alcohol, while a bar needs a reservation and a named payer. If you book a bar, ask whether they take a group tab and what the minimum spend is.
- D-14
3.Guest list
Include the people they actually worked with, not just their reporting line — the other team, the person on parental leave, the contractor who left in March. Decide early whether managers are invited, because it changes what people are willing to say.
- D-12
4.Collect contributions for gift
Set a suggested amount rather than an open-ended one — five to fifteen euros is the range that gets people to contribute without anyone feeling squeezed — and take cash and a payment link both. One person holds the money and keeps a written list of who gave, so no one is chased twice.
- D-7
5.Buy collective gift
Buy once the collection has actually closed, not on the projected total: contributions land late and you should not be covering the gap yourself. If the gift is engraved or personalised, add a week — engraving is the classic thing that arrives after the party.
- D-5
6.Order cake or pastries
Count on one and a half portions per confirmed guest, and ask for at least one option without nuts or alcohol. Order rather than improvise on the morning: bakeries need 48 hours for anything larger than a standard tart.
- D-5
7.Organize drinks
Budget roughly two drinks per person for a two-hour slot, and make the non-alcoholic option something other than tap water. Check the company alcohol policy before you buy — some offices cap it or ban it outright, and that is a conversation to have before the receipt exists.
- D-3
8.Prepare farewell speech
Agree who speaks — one colleague plus the manager is plenty — and keep it to two or three minutes each. Ask a couple of people for a specific anecdote rather than adjectives, and avoid anything about why they are leaving.
- D-7
9.Create collective card / guestbook
Circulate it while people are still at their desks, not on the day: a card passed around in the last hour gets six signatures. Give it to one person per team to walk around, and keep it away from the leaver's desk.
- D-2
10.Light decorations
Enough to signal it is not a normal meeting room, and no more — a banner, a few balloons, nothing that needs a ladder. Confirm who takes it down, because whoever books the room next will not.
- D-1
11.Bring camera
Nominate one person rather than assuming phones will cover it, and ask them to get the group shot early while everyone is still there. Ask the leaver before publishing anything internally — a photo they did not consent to is a genuine problem, not a technicality.
- D-2
12.Confirm attendance
Chase the non-responders directly, because the count drives the cake and drinks order two days later. Watch for anyone on client site or annual leave that week — they will want to send a message if they cannot come.
- D-0
13.Set up on-site
Allow forty-five minutes before the first guest, and get the leaver out of the room with a plausible errand. Check the practical things nobody thinks of: glasses, a bottle opener, ice, and somewhere to put coats.
- D-0
14.Gift presentation and speech
Do it twenty to thirty minutes in, once people have arrived but before anyone starts leaving. Have the card and the gift already in the room, and let the leaver reply — most want to, and the party ends better when they do.
How to adapt this checklist
The fourteen steps hold for most farewells, but three variables move them.
Notice period. Three weeks is the comfortable case. If someone resigns on a Friday and leaves the following Friday, steps 4, 5 and 9 collapse into three days — switch to a digital collection and a card everyone signs online, and buy a gift that is available off the shelf rather than engraved.
Seniority and team size. For a five-person team, steps 2, 6 and 10 are an hour of work and a bakery run. Above thirty guests, the venue stops being a meeting room, step 3 needs an actual invitation, and step 7 turns into a budget line someone has to approve.
The reason they are leaving. A retirement, a resignation and a redundancy are three different events. If the departure was not voluntary, step 8 needs care and step 3 needs discretion — and check with the person themselves whether they want a party at all before you start step 1.
The steps people underestimate
Step 4, collecting contributions. It always takes twice as long as expected, and the person holding the envelope ends up covering the shortfall. Set a deadline two days before you buy, and say so when you ask.
Step 8, the speech. Two minutes of specific memories beats ten minutes of improvised warmth. Write it down, and read it once out loud before the day.
Step 12, confirming attendance. The headcount is what makes the cake and the drinks right. Guessing high wastes budget; guessing low is worse.
This is the same 14-step plan DraftLine generates, with real dates counted back from the person's last day.
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