Tips and Tricks

Let's assume, your are the one, responsible for organizing a proper farewell experience for a colleague or team member, the task at hand sounds easy. While it's relatively clear what you would like to achieve, it's not always that easy.

We want to provide you with a easy checklist to follow:

1. Plan enough time: you need at least 3 weeks upfront to the farewell event
2. Setting clear deadlines is key, the following process worked well in the past
   • Initial communication: people should recognize things are coming up and maybe get some time to collect memories, especially pictures
   • First reminder: 1 week before deadline
   • Second and final reminder: 1-3 days before final deadline
     • This final reminder should be very clear, colleagues tend to procrastinate until the finish line
3. As you can see above, it should be easy for you to re-communicate to all the people you invited to contribute. You might consider
   • Starting a Slack/Teams group with all the colleagues (Make sure NOT to include your presentee)
   • Use email with CC or BCC and re-use the target audience for any reminder
4. Offer different types of contributions
   • A scope of the task for everyon
   • A fast-lane scope of the task for people with little time or patience
     • For example: "Please make sure to leave at least your personal message, which you will find at the end of the form."
5. Plan the money-part upfront, here are some things to consider
   • Do you want to collect money from you co-workers?
   • How much money do you need in total?
   • How would you like to collect the money (i.e. PayPal, Money Transfers, ...)
   • What about people that don't have a PayPal account
   • Tell people how the money is spent
   • Maybe help them with a minimum amount you would need
   • PayPal offers a PayPal.me link which is easy to share