For a retirement
A retirement gift the whole team writes
Someone gives a speech, someone hands over a card with forty signatures, and by Friday it is in a drawer. This is the version that outlasts the speeches.
Free to make and free to collect. You pay only if you print it.
How it works
One link goes round the team. Each person adds a recipe and a line about the person leaving. We design it, you check the PDF, and it arrives as an A4 hardback in time for the last day.
Nobody has to sign up for anything, which matters when you are asking forty people who all have something else to be doing.
Why recipes work better than messages
Asked to write a message, most people write “all the best, you will be missed”. Asked for a recipe, the same person writes about the curry they brought to the Christmas lunch in 2019, and that is the thing worth keeping.
It also solves the awkwardness of a leaving gift for someone whose taste you do not know. Everyone knows what they ate together.
When to start
Three to four weeks before the last day. Work contributions come in slowly and then all at once on the deadline, which is fine, because the reminder does the chasing for you.
Close it a fortnight before the day so printing and delivery are not a problem on a Thursday afternoon.
Who to ask
The current team, and then the people who left before them. Someone who worked with them fifteen years ago and moved on is usually delighted to be asked and writes something nobody else could.
Include the people they trained. That is the page they will reread.
What contributors are asked
Every contributor gets a prompt with their recipe, so nobody faces an empty box:
- A recipe for all that new spare time?
- Who taught you this one?
- When do you make it?
- What does it remind you of?
What arrives
An A4 hardback book on 170gsm uncoated paper, printed and bound in the UK, with one recipe per page and space under each for a handwritten note. You read the whole thing as a PDF before anything is printed.
Questions
- What is a good retirement gift from a group of colleagues?
- Something that costs each person a couple of minutes rather than a whip-round, and that says something specific. A cookbook of recipes from the team does both, and the notes underneath are what make it a leaving present rather than a book.
- Can we collect money from the team towards it?
- Contributors can chip in towards the printing when they add their recipe if you turn that on. It comes off what the organiser pays, and nobody is shown what anyone else gave.
- How long does it take to arrive?
- Around two weeks from the moment you approve it, printed and bound in the UK. Set the collection deadline with that in mind.
Send it round the team this afternoon.
Three questions and you have a link to send. Free until you print it.