Make a leaving video for a colleague

Why a leaving video beats a card round the office

A leaving card gets passed around the office, gathers fifteen versions of “good luck for the future!”, and lives in a drawer. A leaving video is different: your colleague sees the faces and hears the voices of the people they worked with, telling the stories only they know. It works just as well when half the team is remote or the leaver’s favourite people sit in three different time zones — which, these days, is most teams.

The hard part was never the sentiment. It’s the collection: chasing twenty busy people for clips, receiving nine sideways videos on WhatsApp, and stitching them together the night before the leaving do. That’s the part GroupCheer does for you. You share one link, everyone records in their browser, we check each clip as it arrives, chase the stragglers, and edit everything into one polished montage.

What to say in a leaving video message

The best leaving messages are specific. A good prompt to give contributors (GroupCheer suggests these automatically):

• Share one thing you’ll miss. “Tuesday coffee runs won’t be the same” lands better than “we’ll all miss you”.
• Tell a story only you can tell. The project that nearly fell apart, the interview where they made you laugh, the thing they said in your first week that stuck.
• Say thank you for something concrete. A lesson, a favour, a moment they backed you.
• End with a short goodbye. One line, looking at the camera. It’s the bit that gets replayed.

Steer people away from in-jokes that need a paragraph of setup, anything they wouldn’t say in front of the leaver’s family, and long career recaps — the montage covers the arc, each clip just needs one true thing.

Who to invite

Go wider than the immediate team — the unexpected contributors make the video:

• Their team and manager — the core of the video.
• The people they came up with — old teammates who’ve moved on, their first manager, the intake they joined with.
• Cross-team allies — the finance partner they battled quarter-ends with, the designer from that one big launch.
• Clients or partners, where appropriate — a short professional thank-you from a client carries surprising weight.
• The unexpected voice — the office manager, the security guard who knows everyone’s name. These are the clips people talk about afterwards.

Aim for eight to twenty clips. Fewer than eight can feel thin for someone leaving after years; beyond twenty, keep clips short so the montage stays under ten minutes.

Timing it right

Work back from the leaving do (or their last day):

1. A week or more out — create the video, add contributors, share the link. People record when they have a quiet moment, which is why the link beats a scheduled call.
2. Two days before the deadline — GroupCheer automatically reminds anyone who hasn’t recorded. You don’t have to send a single awkward chase message.
3. Deadline day — preview the montage, reorder anything you like, and unlock it.
4. The moment itself — play it at the leaving do, or send it privately if that’s more their style. Either way, they keep the video forever — long after the desk plant has been re-homed.