Running a welcome and farewell party - fix the guest of honor's availability before sending candidate dates

When scheduling a welcome and farewell party (a Japanese workplace tradition for people joining or leaving a team), whose availability did you ask about first? If you send candidate dates to the whole department, decide by majority, and only then tell the guest of honor, there is still a chance the guest of honor cannot make that date. People being sent off have schedules that shift easily with handovers and paid leave, and people being welcomed have just arrived and do not know their own schedules yet. A welcome and farewell party is a gathering where nobody else’s availability means anything until “the date the guest of honor can attend” is set.

So the order is reversed. You send candidate dates to everyone only after checking the guest of honor’s availability. Here we look separately at the case with a single guest of honor and the case with both someone leaving and someone joining.

Do not make the guest of honor choose candidate dates

If you ask the guest of honor “Which of these 4 dates works best?”, it puts them in the position of making demands about their own party, and even when a date is bad for them, they will say “Any of them is fine.” Just changing how you ask avoids this.

• Ask only for the dates that do not work. Ask, “Please tell me the days in October when you will not be in the office and the days you have commitments you cannot move”
• For a farewell, check the last day in the office. Once they start using up paid leave they stop coming in, so that day is the real deadline
• For a welcome, aim for 2 to 3 weeks after they start. The first week is full of things to learn, and the party works better once names and faces match up
• Secure dates early in seasons with many transfers at once. Several departments tend to be looking for venues in the same week

Do not show the planning to the guest of honor

If you also send the attendance poll URL to the guest of honor, they can see who is and is not coming for them. A screen lined with the names of absentees is the last thing the guest of honor needs to see.

• Send the attendance poll to everyone except the guest of honor. The organizer records the guest of honor’s attendance on their behalf
• Discuss gifts and group message cards through a separate channel. If you write about them in the poll’s comment field, assume the guest of honor will see them
• Tell the guest of honor only the confirmed date, time, and place. Limit who sees the progress of the planning to managers and co-organizers

Once the 3 candidates are set, send them to everyone. If you prepare the attendance poll with the PickDay creation form and give the URL only to participants other than the guest of honor, you can lock in the headcount without showing them the tally screen.

Keep the fee and invitation for a welcome and farewell party clear

Even when attendance is optional, there is pressure that makes a welcome and farewell party hard to decline. Writing the fee and end time up front makes it easier to decide whether to attend or not.

• State in the invitation that “participants will cover the guest of honor’s share”. If the fee breakdown stays unclear, questions pile up on the organizer
• Collect fees at the reception on the day. Collecting in advance means the organizer has to handle refunds for absences
• Set 2 fee levels, for people who drink and people who do not. If the fee is the same, people who do not drink hesitate to come
• Write the end time. People who pick up children or have long commutes can make plans

Switching when only 1 candidate date remains

When you overlay the guest of honor’s availability with venue openings, sometimes only 1 date is left. In that case, stop scheduling and switch to an attendance check.

Collect only the headcount with a 2-way choice of ○ and ×, without listing candidates. Listing candidates people cannot really choose from only slows down answers, so it is faster to write, “We will hold it on this date. Please just tell us whether you can attend.” What decides it is who the key stakeholder is; a date that person cannot attend is not worth keeping as a candidate.

How to read the headcount and set deadlines can be handled with the same thinking as scheduling large groups.

Decide how it ends from the guest of honor’s way home

What makes or breaks a welcome and farewell party is whether the guest of honor could leave at the end feeling good. Work out the end time backward from the guest of honor’s route home, and place the speeches and gift-giving in the middle rather than at the end. Make the after-party optional, and if the organizer prepares a moment for the guest of honor to slip out, you avoid them staying on just to be polite.