Below is the full speech, laid out the way it would appear on cue cards: one beat per card, each with a short heading so you can see where you are at a glance. Read it through once for the shape, then use the notes underneath to make it yours.
The speech
Thank you all for coming, and thank you to the social committee for the decorations and for keeping this a surprise for almost a whole week. We are here to celebrate Margaret, who retires on Friday after twenty-eight years with us.
Margaret joined as a receptionist when the office had one computer and a fax machine. She moved into accounts, then ran the accounts team, and for the last ten years she has looked after payroll for every person in this room. Nobody here has been paid late on her watch.
In my first week, I made a mistake on a client invoice that would have cost us a lot of money. Margaret found it, fixed it, and then came to my desk and said, “Everyone gets one. That was yours.” [PAUSE] She never mentioned it again. I have tried to manage people that way ever since.
Margaret is the person who knows where everything is, including the spare key, the good stapler and the history behind every decision. She has trained half this team. She remembers your children’s names, and she always asks how they are doing.
We will miss her calm when the end of the month gets busy, and her honesty when a plan was not going to work. We will miss her lemon slice on Fridays. And we will miss the way she says “leave it with me”, because when Margaret says that, it is done.
Margaret tells me retirement means her garden, her grandchildren and a long trip around the coast. Margaret, you have earned every day of it. Please come back and visit, and bring the lemon slice. The kettle will always be on for you here.
Would everyone please raise a glass, or a cup of tea. To Margaret: thank you for twenty-eight years. Enjoy every minute of what comes next.
Open this speech as cue cards to edit it, change the text size and print it.
Make it your own
- Ask a few colleagues for one memory each before you write. Use the best one as your story.
- Name the person’s real contribution. Specific work they did means more than general praise.
- Keep the career history to one card. People came to celebrate the person, not the job titles.
- This shape also works for a farewell when someone is moving on to a new job.
Work through the cards in order. For each one, ask what job it is doing (introducing you, showing a trait, thanking people, asking the room to act) and write your own version that does the same job. Keep each card to one idea. If a card gets too long to glance at, split it in two.
How to deliver it
Rehearse out loud at least three times, standing up, holding the cards you will use on the day. The first run is for finding the awkward sentences, the second for timing, and the third for looking up. Try to say the first line of each card while looking at the audience, then glance down only to find the next prompt.
Slow down more than feels natural, especially after a punchline or an emotional line. Cues in square brackets, such as [PAUSE], are reminders for you, not words to say. Number your cards, hold them at chest height, and move each finished card to the back of the stack. If you are using a microphone, hold it in one hand and the cards in the other.
For more on this kind of speech, read the how to give a toast, or go back to all speech examples.