Leaving do ideas: send-offs, cards and gifts for a colleague who's moving on

Somebody’s leaving, and through some mysterious process nobody can quite explain, you’re now in charge of the send-off. Congratulations. You are the leaving do organiser, keeper of the card, guardian of the envelope.

The good news: a great leaving do isn’t about money or a fancy venue. It’s about making the leaver feel that their time with you mattered. This guide covers the format, the collection, the card, gifts by budget and by type of leaver, a speech you can actually deliver, and one slightly unusual idea that tends to get the whole office playing.

Start with the leaver, not the venue

Before you book anything, think about who’s leaving and how they feel about it. A few quick questions sort most of it out:

• Do they like a fuss? Some people want a big night. Others would rather slip out quietly with a cake and a handshake.
• Why are they going? New job, travelling, retirement, moving away, redundancy. The tone of a retirement do is very different from a “they’ve been poached” do.
• Who’s actually in the team? If half of you are remote, a pub night shuts them out.
• Do they drink? Don’t build the whole thing around a bar if the guest of honour doesn’t.

If you’re not sure, ask them. “Do you want a do, and if so what kind?” is a perfectly normal question, and it saves you organising a karaoke night for the quietest person in the building.

Leaving do formats that work

The pub after work

The classic. Pick somewhere near the office with space to stand around, book an area if you can, and tell people a start time rather than a finish time. Leave enough room for people who can only stay for one drink. Make sure there are good soft drinks and some food, because a leaving do where everyone’s had three pints on an empty stomach has a way of producing speeches nobody asked for.

The team lunch

Ideal for teams with caring responsibilities, long commutes or people who don’t drink. It’s inclusive, it’s in work time and it ends at a sensible hour. Book a table, have the card and gift ready, and do the speech before the puddings arrive while everyone’s still listening.

The desk send-off

Low effort, high warmth. Gather round their desk late on their last afternoon with cake, a card and a few words. It’s the right call for people who hate a fuss, and it means everyone in the office can drop by for five minutes.

The remote or hybrid send-off

For distributed teams, a video call is the leaving do. Keep it tight:

1. Book 30 minutes at a time that suits the leaver’s time zone.
2. Tell everyone to bring a drink (tea counts) and to have one memory ready.
3. Open with a short speech, then go round the call for memories.
4. Share the digital card, the gift and any links in the chat at the end.

Hybrid teams can combine the two: a desk send-off in the office with a laptop on the table so remote colleagues can join, see the cake and heckle appropriately.

The collection: etiquette that keeps everyone comfortable

The collection is where leaving dos quietly go wrong. Money is awkward, people have very different budgets, and nobody wants to feel judged by the envelope. Some simple rules:

• Keep it voluntary. Say clearly that giving is optional and signing the card is just as welcome.
• Don’t name an amount. No “we’re all putting in a tenner”. It puts pressure on people who can’t, and it makes it obvious who didn’t.
• Keep it anonymous. A sealed envelope passed around, or an online collection that hides individual amounts.
• Give people time. Start a week or two before the last day so part-timers and people on leave can join in.
• Be transparent about the gift, not the totals. Tell people what the collection bought, not who gave what.
• Keep it quiet from the leaver. Obvious, but the number of envelopes accidentally left on the leaver’s own desk is impressive.

Leaving card ideas

The big group card

The giant card is a tradition for a reason. A few ways to make it better than seventeen versions of “good luck!!”:

• Give people a prompt. “Your favourite memory of Sam” or “One thing Sam taught you” gets far better messages than a blank card.
• Circulate it early. Late cards fill up with rushed scribbles. Give it a week.
• Add photos. Printed team photos stuck inside turn a card into something they might actually keep.
• Hide a QR code inside. If you’re giving a digital gift (more on that below), the card is the perfect place for it.

The digital group card

For remote and hybrid teams, a digital group card means everyone can sign wherever they are. Send the link to the whole team with the same prompt idea, set a deadline a couple of days before the last day, and share it at the end of the leaving call.

Leaving gift ideas by budget

What you can spend depends entirely on the collection, so here are ideas at every level. Prices are rough guides rather than targets.

Budget	Gift ideas	Good for
Under £15	A personalised game starring the leaver, a quality notebook, nice coffee or tea, a plant, a framed team photo	Small teams, colleagues you don’t know well, add-ons
£15 to £40	A good travel bottle or flask, a book linked to their next adventure, a voucher for a café near the new office, a cookbook from their favourite cuisine	Most leaving collections
£40 to £80	A decent bag or backpack, an experience voucher (a cooking class, a spa day), a good bottle and glasses	Long-serving colleagues, bigger teams
£80 and up	A bigger experience, a quality watch or pen, something tied to a hobby (golf lessons, art supplies, a good camera bag)	Retirements and people who’ve been there for decades

Whatever the budget, the most personal bit is usually the cheapest: the card, the speech and the jokes only your team could make.

Gift ideas by type of leaver

The one going travelling

Practical, light and packable. A good travel bottle, a packing cube set, a journal for the trip or a universal plug adaptor. Add a list of places the team insists they visit. You could also make them a summer game with the team as cameos, so they can play it on long bus journeys and keep an eye on the leaderboard from wherever they are.

The retiree

Retirement deserves a bit more ceremony (see the section below). Gifts tied to what they’re retiring to work best: golf, gardening, travel, grandchildren. A framed photo of the team and a book of messages from colleagues past and present often means more than anything expensive.

The one moving to a rival

The fun one. A little affectionate teasing is allowed: a mug that says “traitor” in the team’s handwriting, a “visitor” lanyard, or a gift card for the coffee shop next to their new office so they “don’t forget where they came from”. Keep it obviously fond, and finish with a sincere good luck. They’ll be your industry contact for the next twenty years.

The remote one

Send something that arrives at their door on their last day, ideally with a printed card signed by the team. Or keep it fully digital: a digital group card plus a game link dropped in the chat during the leaving call, which arrives instantly wherever they are. Our guide to last-minute digital gifts has more ideas if the date has crept up on you.

The leaving speech: short, clean and kind

Nobody remembers a long leaving speech fondly. Aim for two to three minutes. A reliable structure:

1. Welcome and why we’re here. One line.
2. A bit of history. When they joined and one thing that’s changed since.
3. One story. A single funny, clean story that everyone in the room will recognise.
4. What we’ll miss. Be specific. “Her calm in a crisis” beats “she was great”.
5. What’s next. Wish them well for the new job, the travels or the retirement.
6. The toast. Raise a glass (or a mug) and hand over the card and gift.

Some clean lines you can borrow or adapt:

• “Sam’s been here eight years, which in printer years is roughly a century.”
• “We’ve checked, and nobody else knows how the spreadsheet works. So, no pressure, but please write it down.”
• “You’re leaving a hole in the team. Mostly a hole shaped like the good biscuits.”
• “To Priya: thank you for every meeting you made shorter.”
• “Wherever you go next, they’re very lucky. Please don’t tell them about the stapler.”

Pro tip: Run the jokes past one colleague who knows the leaver well. If they wince, cut the line. A leaving speech should make the leaver laugh, not explain themselves to HR.

A game where the leaver is the hero

Here’s the idea that tends to get everyone playing. Make a short, silly video game starring the leaver, using the office theme: they dodge meetings and jammed printers, collect coffee and payslips, and finish with a team high five.

How to set it up:

1. Pick the style. The arena battle or the platformer work well because both have a boss at the end who can be a member of your cast. So does the beat-’em-up, which ends in a pillow-fight boss battle (strictly comedy, nobody gets hurt). The flappy flyer is the quickest to pick up for a crowd. Leaver does parkrun every Saturday, or has the longest commute in the building? Try the endless runner: they run the distance to reach the team waiting at the finish, then it keeps going, faster, for a distance leaderboard.
2. Cast the team. Put colleagues in as the supporting cast. In the flappy flyer they fly past to cheer or heckle the leaver. Players pick who to play on a character select screen, so people can play as themselves too.
3. Choose the final boss. Making the manager the final boss is very funny, but only if the boss is a good sport and has agreed. If in doubt, make the boss the printer and leave it at that.
4. Rewrite a few lines. Swap in the team’s in-jokes: the meeting that never ends, the kitchen rota, the legendary reply-all.
5. Keep it in family mode. It’s work. Family mode is the default and clean; our cheeky mode vs family mode guide explains the difference if you’re tempted.
6. Put the QR code on a screen at the do. Everyone scans it with their phone and plays. Every game has its own leaderboard, so it turns into an office tournament fast.

You can build and play it free with demo characters straight away. To turn your colleagues into characters you need a plan from the pricing page, and everyone in the photo must agree to be in it. Our photo tips guide helps you cast it well, and the leaving do game for a coworker page has ready-made ideas. For sharing tricks, see how to share your game.

It works for other office occasions too: the same idea makes a cheerful Secret Santa gift for a coworker.

Retirement send-offs: slower, warmer, longer

A retirement isn’t just a leaving do with more cake. Someone might be closing a chapter that lasted decades, so the send-off can afford to be warmer and a little more reflective.

• Invite people from the past. Former colleagues often love being asked back. Give them plenty of notice.
• Collect messages from further afield. A book of notes from colleagues past and present makes a gift people keep.
• Tell the career story. A short slideshow or a few stories from different eras of their working life.
• Let them speak if they want to. Many retirees want the chance to say thank you.

For the game, the retirement theme swaps meetings for alarm clocks and emails, with golf balls and pints to collect and a trophy at the end. The story climber is a lovely fit: as they climb, up to 12 milestones appear, each with a year and caption, so you can mark the day they joined, the big projects and the famous office move. The retirement game for a coworker page has more ideas.

Your leaving do checklist

To pull it all together, here’s the order of play:

1. Ask the leaver what kind of send-off they’d like.
2. Pick the format and book it (or send the call invite).
3. Start the card and the voluntary, anonymous collection a week or two out.
4. Choose the gift for the type of leaver, not just the budget.
5. Make the game, get everyone’s agreement to be in it and print the QR code.
6. Write a two to three minute speech and test the jokes on one trusted colleague.
7. On the day: cake, card, speech, gift, then the QR code on the big screen.

Do that and the leaver walks out with a full card, a good gift and a leaderboard they’ll keep checking from their new desk. Which is exactly how a send-off should feel.