A161 | When Someone Leaves — How We Handle Departures and What We Have Learned About Doing It Well

People leave. It is one of the most normal things that happens in a company, and it is also one of the things that companies handle most inconsistently. We have thought about this more carefully at Smith Ribbon & Bow over the past few years — not because we have had an unusual number of departures, but because we noticed that how we handled them seemed to affect things we cared about: the relationship with the person leaving, the mood of the team they were part of, and in some cases whether they came back.

This is a post about what we have learned about handling departures well, based on our own experience and mistakes.

The Two Kinds of Departure

We distinguish internally between two broad categories of departure, and the handling is different for each.

The first is a departure that is mutually understood and reasonably amicable — the person has found a better opportunity, is moving for family reasons, is retiring, or has simply reached the end of what this particular role could offer them. These are the departures where the main risk is handling the transition badly: not giving enough time for knowledge transfer, letting the team feel uncertain about what comes next, or allowing the farewell to be rushed and awkward in a way that leaves a sour final impression on everyone involved.

The second is a departure under difficult circumstances — where the person is leaving because something went wrong, either on their side or on ours. These require a different kind of care: honesty about what happened, fairness in how the situation is resolved, and enough dignity in the process that the person's sense of themselves is not unnecessarily damaged on the way out. We have not always handled these well. We have learned more from the ones we handled badly than from the ones that went smoothly.

The Farewell Ritual

For departures in the first category, we have settled into a fairly consistent pattern over the years. When someone announces they are leaving, their section holds a small gathering before their last day — not a formal event, just a meal or tea together, usually organised by their colleagues rather than by management. There is usually a card, sometimes a small gift, occasionally a framed photograph of the team. Management attends if invited but does not chair it.

This matters more than it might seem. A farewell organised by management can feel like a managed exit. A farewell organised by peers is an expression of genuine feeling. We try not to interfere with the second type, even when the organisation instinct is to make it more polished.

The last working day itself is usually low-key. We try to ensure the person leaves with a clean handoff — outstanding items resolved or handed over, access removed in a way that does not feel punitive, and a straightforward acknowledgement from whoever they reported to that their contribution was real and noticed. We have found that the specific words matter less than the fact of saying them at all.

The Return Question

We have had people come back after leaving. In two cases, people who left for other opportunities returned within eighteen months because the new situation did not work out the way they had hoped. In one case, someone who left under difficult circumstances came back three years later, after a conversation at a trade fair that led to a frank discussion about what had gone wrong and whether the issues were genuinely resolved.

We think the return rate is related, at least in part, to how the departure was handled. A person who leaves feeling respected and fairly treated is more likely to consider coming back when circumstances change. A person who leaves feeling dismissed or poorly treated rarely does. This is not why we try to handle departures well — we try to handle them well because it is the right thing — but it is a consequence worth being aware of.

Something Worth Saying

We want to add one thing that does not fit neatly into either of the categories above. There is a version of handling departures well that is really just managing optics — going through the right motions so that neither the person leaving nor the team they are leaving feels that anything was mishandled. We are not describing that version. What we are describing is an approach grounded in the belief that the relationship with the people who work here does not end when they stop working here. Some of the people who have left us are now customers, or suppliers, or have referred us to customers. Some are simply people we know in the industry and occasionally see at trade events. The way a departure is handled is the last strong impression a person takes of a company, and for some of those people, it is the impression that determines whether they ever come back into contact with us in a useful way.

But beyond the practical consequences, there is a simpler reason to handle departures with care: the people who are still here are watching. They notice how their colleagues are treated on the way out. That observation tells them something about how they will be treated if they ever face a similar moment. Handling a departure well is, in that sense, part of how we maintain the culture of the factory for the people who stay.

What We Got Wrong

The departures we have handled worst have two things in common. First, we moved too quickly through the practical aspects — the handover, the paperwork, the offboarding process — and did not leave enough time for the human aspects. Second, we conflated the person's decision to leave with a judgment about the company, and responded with a defensiveness that made the exit harder for everyone.

The first mistake is easy to make in a busy production environment where someone's absence immediately creates a gap. The urgency of filling the gap can crowd out the time needed for a proper farewell. We now try to build explicit time for the human side into our departure planning — even a single meal or an hour for a team gathering — rather than assuming it will happen spontaneously.

The second mistake is subtler. When someone we value decides to leave, there is a natural human tendency to take it personally. We have learned to separate the question of what the person is doing from the question of why, and to ask the second question with genuine curiosity rather than defensiveness. The answers are usually more informative and less damaging to the relationship than the defensive interpretation we might have started from.