Farewell Speech for a Colleague – Examples and Inspiration

Diane, I remember my first day here more clearly than I remember most of the last year, and that's actually your fault. I was sitting at my desk, having left my access card at home, understanding absolutely nothing of our internal systems, and you walked past with a coffee I hadn't asked for and said, 'Come on, I'll show you everything. Takes an hour, not three weeks.'

It took closer to an hour and a half, but that's not really the point. The point is that you had plenty on your plate at the time — you were in the middle of the biggest project the department had run in years — and you still sat down and walked me through the entire system, step by step, as if I were the only thing on your list that day.

I've since found out it wasn't just me. Half this office has been trained by you at some point — some of us on our first day, others when a new system rolled out, and a few just because they asked nicely. You have never once said no to explaining something one more time.

It's rare that you can point to one person and say: this culture, the one we have here, that's her doing. But I can, with Diane. You've taught us that asking is never a weakness, and that the best colleague is the one who makes room for everyone else to get good at their job too.

— Farewell speech, colleague