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Write a farewell speech for a colleague

By: Susan Dugdale 

Writing a great farewell speech for a colleague leaving can seem like a really difficult task.

Just what do you say in goodbye speech for a co-worker?

How do you find the right words? And where do you start?

To make it easier, follow and complete each of the steps below.  

The end result will be a farewell speech for your colleague you'll be proud to give. And even better still, it'll be a speech they'll be delighted to receive! ☺    

What's on this page

A start to finish 7 step process for writing a goodbye speech for a co-worker, with printable brainstorm and outline documents to use, and a sample speech.

• Step One: Brainstorming - collecting your material [with a printable brainstorm template to use]
• Step Two: Reviewing your material
• Step Three: Organizing the body of your speech [with a printable speech outline template]
• Step Four: Brainstorming the conclusion [with a printable brainstorm template]
• Step Five: Brainstorming the introduction [with a printable brainstorm template]
• Step Six: Linking the pieces together (with a sample speech: text and audio)
• Step Seven: Testing and rehearsing
  
  

Step One: Brainstorming - collecting material 

The first step is to gather your material for the body, or main part, of your farewell speech. The easiest way I know to do this is to brainstorm.

How to brainstorm to get ideas

Either download and print off a A4 sized blank brainstorm template to use, the one in the image below, or grab a blank sheet of paper of your own.

Use the four headings below as triggers or prompts to get your ideas flowing.

Put down everything you think of, or associate with your colleague, under each of them. (Just like I've done in the example image above.) Do not stop to get the spelling right. Do not stop to edit. You can do all of that later.

What’s important now is to get down as many content ideas as possible. (If you don’t know something you think is vital to include, make a note to find out later.)

When you can’t think of anything more, move on to the next prompt.

1. Basic Facts – History with Company 

(You need to get these accurate. If you don’t know, or are unsure about anything, ask.)

• How long has your colleague been employed by the company?
• What positions or areas have they worked in over that time?
• What are they leaving to do?
  Take a new job in another company?
  Travel?
  Retire?
  Go on parental leave?
  Have they been promoted or transferred to another section or branch of the company?
  Or is what they’re going to be doing in the future private and they would prefer it not mentioned? Like, for instance, they're going to be dealing with a major health issue and don't want everybody to know about it.

2. Positive qualities or characteristics

What positive qualities or characteristics automatically spring to mind when you think of your colleague?

Note them down, with examples.

For example:

• Fun loving: organized ‘crazy hat’ and t-shirt Fridays.
  
  
• Genuinely caring and considerate: made a point of always acknowledging what had been done by someone to get a job done, was careful to NOT overload already stretched workers, watched for signs of stress.
  
  
• Honest and respectful: direct and sincere in dealings with others, acknowledged their own part and what had been done by others in the success or otherwise of projects.
  
  
• Collaborative: didn’t need to be a solo hero – could easily involve others and share the spotlight – a team player.
  
  
• Responsible: took ownership of tasks assigned to them, made sure they delivered the very best they could.
  
  

3. Work stories: serious and amusing 

Over the time you’ve been working together what stories can you share that best illustrate your colleague’s positive qualities? Are there major projects or milestone developments that could or should be mentioned? What have you jointly achieved? Highlight your shared successes!

For example: 

• the development of the hugely successful mentoring and ongoing training scheme to nurture junior product developers
• the push to diversify and develop high value niche products

What about genuinely amusing, or funny, stories you know your colleague will be OK about sharing publicly?

For example:

• the time they thought it was ‘crazy hat’ Friday and arrived at the office in time to meet the trade delegation from China in the foyer wearing an oversize pink furry top hat decorated with bright yellow daffodils bouncing and nodding at the ends of long green springs.

4. Special skills and their impact

What special skills does your colleague have that you admire or are inspired by? Perhaps they have great communication skills. Or maybe they’re a whizz at collecting, organizing and analyzing information for reports.

What impact did those skills have on you? On the business?

For example:

• the ability to pull together useful, easily understood, yet complex, spread sheets quickly
  
  

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Step Two: Reviewing your material

Go through all of the ideas you've generated.

As you do, consider the purpose of the speech, the tone you want, who is going to be listening (the audience) and then choose what you want to use from each section of your brainstorm.

Remember you have 3 -5 minutes speaking time. You can not include everything! Take the best and strongest of what you have.

(For more about the characteristics of a good farewell speech) 

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Step Three: Organizing the body of your speech

Enter what you have chosen under the right headings in the farewell speech outline template.  This material will form the body of your farewell speech.

See the examples below. All these content ideas have been taken from the initial brainstorm (Step One).

1. Basic facts: history with company

• [name of colleague eg. Sam] has been with us 5 years.
• Started as senior product development manager and soon became the new group product development manager.
• Leaving to go travelling!

2. Positive qualities, with examples

• Fun loving: organized ‘crazy hat’ and t-shirt Fridays
  
  
• Genuinely caring and considerate: made a point of always acknowledging what had been done by someone to get a job done, was careful to NOT overload already stretched workers, watched for signs of stress
  
  
• Collaborative: didn’t need to be a solo hero, could easily involve others and share the spotlight, a team player

3. Work stories

Successful projects:

• the development of the hugely successful mentoring and ongoing training scheme to nurture junior product developers
• the push to diversify and develop high value niche products

Funny work story:

• the time they thought it was ‘crazy hat’ Friday and arrived at the office in time to meet the trade delegation from China in the foyer wearing an oversized pink top hat decorated with bright yellow daffodils bouncing at the ends of long green springs.

4. Special skills and their impact

• the ability to communicate effectively with empathy and humor 
• to motivate through example
• to quickly collate and transform vast quantities of information into readable, actionable reports which laid the foundation for the success of the projects. I’ve learned a lot from being alongside them.
  
  

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Step Four: Brainstorm the conclusion

Use the four headings below as a prompt to note a few ideas to use in your ending.

Do this either on a blank sheet of paper of your own or download and print a blank A4 sized speech conclusion and introduction template to use. 

1. What is the impact of your colleague leaving?

What will you miss? What will change?

Example:

I know it's selfish, but how on earth are we going to pull together the monthly reports without you? And who is going to delight us with a new silly hat every week? We definitely have a few challenges ahead.

2. Best wishes

Send your colleague off with your best wishes for whatever it is they are going to do next.

Examples:

1. Despite knowing we’re going to miss you, we’re excited that you’re going to new and challenging opportunity. We can’t think of a better person for the job. You deserve it!
   
   
2. We’re really happy that your dreams have come true: that you’re going to be travelling and exploring the world. Just don’t rub it in too hard and too often with instagrammable moments.

3. Thanks

Examples:

1. On behalf of us all thank you for everything over your time with us: your encouragement, support, humor, and your leadership.
   
   
2. Thanks for being a great team mate, for teaching me your special spread sheet skills, and most importantly, for sharing my love of chocolate. I couldn’t have wished for a sweeter colleague!

4. Final comment

Examples:

1. Please don't be a stranger. Our door is always open!
   
   
2. Please remember that to us you are much more than a colleague. You are a friend, and friends keep in touch. We look forward to catching up with you sometime soon.
   
   
3. Go well, go strong, and go knowing we think the world of you, and wish you all the best. Keep in touch!

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Step Five: Brainstorm the introduction

Write the speech introduction.  You’ll want a couple of sentences to welcome everyone and to acknowledge why you’ve got together.

(There is space on the printable conclusion/introduction brainstorm template to do this.)

Examples:

1. Good afternoon everyone, and thank you for coming. As we all know, we've gathered to say goodbye to [name] who is leaving us today to take on a new role as [insert name of role e.g. Director of Product Management] for [insert name of company or organization e.g. The Q-R Group]
   
   
2. Who else has been marking off the days until [name of person] leaves us? From next Monday there’ll be a gap in our team. They’ll be [what ever it is they’re going to do e.g. basking in the sun on a beach in Bali] and we’ll be wondering just how we’re going to manage without them!
   
   
3. Thanks for coming along to help farewell [name of person]. It’s great to see so many of you here. I hope you’ve brought your tissues to mop up the tears!
   

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Step Six: Linking the pieces together

In this step you're going to link the pieces together to make a complete speech.

You'll see in my example speech I've used most of the notes from the outline, and I've added words where needed to tie it altogether.

Here is the full text of the farewell speech for Sam: your much respected and liked colleague. ☺

It is 516 words long which will take approximately 3-4 minutes to say. (See how many words per minute in a speech for more information.)

Sample farewell speech for a colleague leaving

"Who else has been marking off the days until Sam finally leaves us? It’s sad but from next Monday there’ll be a huge hole in our team. She’ll be basking in the sun on a beach in Bali and we’ll be wondering how we’re going to manage without her.

Sam’s been with us for five years now. She began as a senior product development manager and it didn’t seem that long before she was promoted to new group product development manager, a position she’s held for last three years.

And now she’s got her passport updated, bought flight tickets, and she’s off travelling.

I know I speak on behalf of all of us when I say how much we’ve enjoyed working alongside you Sam. We’ve love and admire the initiatives you put in place. They tick all the boxes: increased diversification, sustainability, productivity and workplace satisfaction.

Crazy Hat Friday reminds us to not take ourselves too seriously and to laugh! Something we all need to do.

The development of the recently implemented very successful mentoring and ongoing training scheme to nurture junior product developers will help ensure we continue to grow. While the push to diversify and develop high value niche products has already proven itself lucrative. You were right! There was a need.

In our opinion, what made these initiatives even better was how you put them in place. You make it easy for people to cooperate and collaborate with each other. We admire and respect how easily you share the spotlight, how you made a point of always acknowledging what someone had done in order to get a project over the line, and especially how careful you were to NOT overload already stretched workers, and to watch for signs of stress.

You’re a true team player and leader – a person who understands how to draw the best from the people they work with.

So yes, we’re going to miss you."

"To help get over your absence we’ll cheer ourselves up by remembering the time you thought it was ‘crazy hat’ Friday and arrived at the office in time to meet the trade delegation from China in the foyer wearing an oversized lolly-pink top hat decorated with bright yellow daffodils bouncing at the ends of long green springs.

It was the best, and has made us smile ever since!

Joking aside, next Monday, the reality will hit home.

I know it's selfish, but how on earth are we going to pull together the monthly reports without you? And who is going to delight us with a new silly hat every week? We definitely have a few challenges ahead.

We’re really happy that your dreams have come true: that you’re going to be travelling and exploring the world. Just don’t rub it in too hard and too often with instagrammable moments.

On behalf of us all thank you for everything over your time with us: your encouragement, support, humor, and your leadership.

Go well, go strong, and go knowing we think the world of you, and wish you all the best. Keep in touch!"

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Step seven: testing and rehearsing

To be absolutely sure you've got the tone and timing right, that you've included everything you should and haven’t put in anything that would be best left out, read your speech to a couple of trusted colleagues. Be guided by their comments, and alter your speech if needed.

Once you're satisfied that you've done the best you can please rehearse. Practice is what makes the difference! Getting the words sorted is an important step. However rehearsing can take your speech from ordinary to extraordinary!

For more go to: how to rehearse a speech.

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Farewell speech for a colleague printables

Click the links below to access the three google word documents. (Please note, the links will open in a new window.

• Brainstorm template for the body of the speech
• Brainstorm template for the speech conclusion and introduction
• Farewell speech for a colleague sample outline

To make a copy, share, email, download or print the document, click open the drop down 'file' menu as shown in the screenshot below. Then click on the option you want.

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