Retirement Letters - Composition And Content
As a professional courtesy, an employee who will soon be retiring should submit a retirement letter to his immediate supervisor, even if the supervisor has been informed of the employee’s pending retirement verbally. It is a standard business practice to put this in writing so that the notification of retirement can be filed in the employee’s personnel file.
A retirement letter should be submitted at least six weeks in advance. This gives the company ample notice should someone from outside of the company need to be hired and trained to take the place of the retiring employee.
The format of a standard retirement letter is as follows:
The first paragraph should state the most important fact: The employee is writing to inform his employer that he is retiring. The retirement date should be stated in the first paragraph of this correspondence.
The second paragraph should communicate thanks and appreciation for the opportunity to work for the company. Acknowledge those who have helped you, and include people at all levels in the company. You’ll be surprised at how many people to whom you are indebted.
In the third paragraph, state your willingness and even eagerness to ensure a smooth transition, specifically for your successor and for the company in general. Losing a long-term knowledgeable employee can be difficult, even disruptive. Assurance from you can go a long way to make this as easy a transition as possible.
This is all you need to include in your retirement letter. However, optional paragraphs may be added to include the following:
If you wish to continue working for the company as an outside contractor, either on a part-time or full-time basis, include a fourth paragraph stating this objective.
In a fifth paragraph, you can summarize the highlights of your career, quantifying how you have specifically helped the company. Perhaps you developed a certain system that helped the company to save money or time. For example: When I arrived, the sales reps and Production Department personnel were at odds with one another. I made it my mission to improve communications by creating mandatory Monday meetings in which the sales reps communicated what the customers wanted, and Production personnel told us what and how we could deliver that to our customers. This improved customer satisfaction 35% and sales went up 13% in the first year after its implementation.
In a sixth and final paragraph, summarize your goodwill toward your fellow co-workers, supervisors, and managers.
As you can see, writing a retirement letter is a piece of cake…retirement cake, that is.
Writing retirement letters is not a hard thing to do when you have a template and samples to follow. At RetirementLettersandSpeeches you will find samples of retirement letters and speeches, as well as a retirement letter format, template, and information about etiquette. Full body samples of retirement letters and speeches are given; best of all, this is free information.
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