The constraint nobody says out loud is that this gift has got to be picked by a group who disagree, from a budget that is not known until the envelope comes back, for somebody half the group does not know well. That rules out anything that depends on taste, and it explains why so many leaving presents end up as vouchers.
What a workplace actually knows
A team may have no idea about her taste in art or his taste in whisky. It does know the job title, the number of years and the name of the place, because those facts live on an org chart. A present built out of exactly those facts cannot be wrong about the person, and it's something a committee can settle in one email thread.
The name print
The name print takes four fields, filled in once: their name, their profession, their years of service, and where they worked. Those get set in type under the fixed Happy Retirement line, and printed here. Nobody has to source a photograph or write a speech into a text box.
Unframed, A4 costs £14.99 and A3 costs £28.99. With a frame on, ready to go straight up, A3 is £69.00. A collection of ten covers the framed A3 at under £7 a head. If the team would rather hand over something used daily, the same four details go on a mug at £16.99.
Signing it
If you take the framed version, sign the backing board rather than the print itself. If you take it unframed, it can go round the office in its sleeve on the Thursday and be framed afterwards by whoever receives it.
Getting it there
Allow a fortnight. Reckon on two to four working days at the printers and two to five in the post, with delivery already paid for, and checkout takes any UK address: the office, or their home if the handover is happening somewhere else.
Where the person leaving is your manager rather than your peer, the guide to buying for a boss handles that particular awkwardness. Where you would rather start from the job than the relationship, the twenty profession guides do exactly that. Both hang off who is retiring.
