Last day at work: How to make a public farewell work for you

A mass email is the easiest way to say what you want to say on your last day and be done with it, but it’s also impersonal. (Representational image: Jan Tinneberg via Unsplash)

When a cabin crew member of Indigo Airlines bid a public farewell to her employer on her last flight with them in mid-April, she became an internet sensation for all the right reasons. Here’s how to make a public farewell work for you:

Farewells tend to be emotional moments. No matter how long you’ve worked with the company, just the act of looking back at the few years (or even months) you’ve spent with your colleagues and bosses can bring up feelings you may not have acknowledged.

These emotions find expression in different ways. You may end up writing a long-winded email to all-hands thanking them for their support or a (very) long LinkedIn post tagging and thanking every single person from the company you find on the platform.

Or as was the case with Surabhi Nair, using her final cabin call with Indigo Airlines to thank the company for taking care of her and her colleagues during the pandemic.

Nair’s case is interesting because few public farewells go viral. Of these, most go viral because the employee has dissed the company and its working style, perhaps even called out specific colleagues and bosses.

How do you make a farewell email work for you?

Farewells are a crucial moment in one’s tenure with any company. This is the last opportunity you’ll have to communicate with your colleagues and bosses while still being in the system. Acknowledge that. Then ask yourself what it is you’d like to say.

A mass email is the easiest way to say what you want to say on your last day and be done with it. It’s also impersonal and most people will read them in passing, if at all. So, keep them crisp and professional. Few people care about how you found your partner at work, for instance.

You could skip the all-hands email completely. Whether or not you do, it may not be a bad idea to send out personal notes to a handful of colleagues who have really made a difference to your time in the company.

How to make a public farewell work for you

Unlike an email, a LinkedIn post is a different ball game altogether. As is a farewell speech. Not everyone has as wide and captive an audience as Surabhi Nair of Indigo did, but with mobile phone cameras on everywhere, at all times, anything has the potential to go viral, even a farewell speech given to a small group of colleagues.

What you write on LinkedIn, specifically, is for everyone to see and judge. It is as public as you can get. Use this moment wisely.

1. Express your gratitude

No person is an island. This may be a good opportunity to thank your peers and bosses for the role they played in your career. “But don’t restrict your appreciation only to your bosses,” says Malcolm Mistry who runs Ushta Te Consultancy that handles recruitments for multiple companies. “Appreciate the contribution of your peers, subordinates, and support staff as well.”

If it’s a speech, call out some of these names; if it’s a LinkedIn post, ensure you tag them correctly.

2. Highlight your achievements

This is a great opportunity to demonstrate what you’ve achieved during your tenure with the company. Highlight a couple of examples that will also show your future employer how you can bring value to their company. This way you’ve not just signed off successfully from your current organisation, you’ve also set the tone for what you can achieve in your next job.

Humility is a virtue. Consider saying “we” instead of “I” while highlighting your achievements. After all, all achievements are team efforts, aren’t they?

3. Don’t gloat or insult

This would be true in most life situations but especially so when you’re doing a public farewell. “It turns off people who are still in the organisation that you’re leaving,” says Mistry.

Using a public forum to criticize or insult your colleagues or bosses is worse still. There are no circumstances in which you come out smelling of roses, irrespective of whether or not the said person deserved that insult.

4. Reflect but look forward

You don’t want your public farewell note/speech to only highlight what you’re going to miss about your old organisation. It’s akin to praising your ex to your new partner.

Take this moment to reflect on the learnings during your tenure but also highlight how you look forward to using them in the future and learning more. This way your old employer feels good about being acknowledged and your new employer feels assured that you aren’t carrying baggage from the old place.

To be sure, you don’t have to deliver a public farewell. At his farewell ceremony, following a series of glowing speeches about him, a legendary editor of yore, stood up to speak and delivered the shortest farewell speech in history, uttering just two words: “Thank you.”

But in these connected times, a public farewell can be a great opportunity for you to leave a good impression on the colleagues you’re leaving behind and also on the ones you’re looking forward to working with.