Welcomes & farewells
How you welcome new-hires & say goodbye
How an organization says hello and goodbye to people is one of the clearest expressions of how much it values the humans behind the roles.
Welcomes and farewells are threshold moments: they mark entry into and exit from the community of the organization. A well-handled welcome communicates that the new person was expected, that their arrival matters, and that someone has thought about what they need to become a genuine member of the culture. A well-handled farewell does something equally important: it acknowledges contribution, closes a chapter cleanly, and leaves both the person leaving and the people staying with a sense of dignity.
When welcomes are neglected, people arrive to find a desk, a laptop, and nobody quite sure what they are supposed to be doing. That experience shapes how they understand the culture for months or years afterward. It signals that the organization is efficient at the mechanical side of joining (access, equipment, paperwork) but has not thought carefully about the human side.
Farewells are often where organizations feel the awkwardness most. When someone leaves by choice, there can be an impulse to minimize the departure, as if acknowledging it too warmly would encourage others. When someone is let go, the absence of any ceremony can feel brutal to those who remain. Both kinds of departure benefit from being handled with deliberateness.