PULTEVENT
Retirement party games: 7 formats that honor a whole career
Thursday, four in the afternoon, the third-floor break room. A sheet cake with her name spelled almost right, forty people holding paper plates, and a projector borrowed from the training room humming on a stack of binders. On the wall: a photo from 1994, the whole billing team crowded around a beige computer the size of a microwave. Margaret, thirty-one years in billing, points at a young man with enormous glasses in the back row. The young man is now the regional director, and he's standing right next to her.
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Retirement parties at work tend to go the same way: cake, a card everyone signed in the last hour, a speech from a manager who joined three years ago, and then people drift back to their desks. The person leaving has spent decades there, and the room gets twenty minutes to say so. Games sound frivolous for that, but the right ones do the job better than speeches, because they bring out the stories only colleagues know.
This page is only about the games. Themes, decorations and speeches are covered in the retirement party guide in the links below. Everything here runs from a laptop on PULTEVENT: the projector or conference-room TV shows it, and colleagues answer from their phones by scanning a QR code, no app. The phones need internet, which in most offices is the easy part.
7 retirement party games, from the welcome to the send-off
1 Thirty-one years on the splash screen
While people gather, the screen shows her name and a slideshow of photos from across her career: ID badges, team lunches, the holiday party in the year of the questionable sweater.
How to run it. Ask the longest-serving colleagues for photos. They usually have the only copies, in a drawer.
Colleagues who joined recently see her career for the first time, and the veterans start telling stories on their own.
2 The career in order
Moments from her time at the company go up out of order: the year she joined, the office move, the old system switched off, her first promotion, the basement flood of 2009. Guests put them in the right sequence on their phones.
How to run it. Mix company milestones with personal ones. Check dates with her quietly beforehand, or with a colleague who's been there almost as long.
Newer staff guess, veterans know, and she gets to correct everyone, which retirees tend to enjoy.
3 Who's in the old team photo
Old photos of people who are in the room today, from when they first joined. The room tries to match faces to names, then you reveal each one.
How to run it. Ask each person before you show their old photo. The regional director with the glasses said yes, but not everyone will.
It turns the tribute into something the whole room shares, and it reminds people how long they've actually worked together.
4 The colleague quiz
Ten questions about her: the mug nobody else was allowed to use, the phrase she said in every meeting, the plant she kept alive through three reorganizations, the guess-the-year questions about her time at the company. Answers from phones, scores on the wall.
How to run it. Have two or three people from her teams write it. Keep every question affectionate and about work life.
Everyone in the room plays, and the answers are better than any speech at showing what she was like to work with.
5 Messages from former colleagues
The manager who hired her, now retired himself. The colleague who moved to the Denver office. The intern she trained who runs a team now. Short clips on the big screen.
How to run it. Start collecting three weeks ahead. Ask for thirty to sixty seconds and one specific memory each, not general good wishes.
People who left years ago still get to say goodbye, and it's the part retirees talk about afterwards.
6 Awards between departments
If departments or former teams played the quiz and timeline as teams, the scoreboard ends with an awards ceremony: special awards first, then third, second and the winning team with fanfare and confetti.
How to run it. Rename one special award after her and give it to the team that knew her best.
It ends the games on a cheer and hands over neatly to the speeches.
7 Credits for a whole career
Closing credits like a film: photos from the years and from today on one side, and on the other every team she worked in, every manager, every office address.
How to run it. Ask her for the list of people she'd like named. She'll remember the ones HR has forgotten.
Nobody from her working life is left out, and people take photos of the screen when they spot their name.
A career, not a birthday
The games are built from her years at the company: dates, teams, projects, the office move nobody has forgotten.
Former colleagues included
People who left years ago can send a video greeting, or join from a video call and play from their phones.
Teams by department
Departments or the teams she worked in compete on one scoreboard, with an awards ceremony to finish.
A proper send-off
Closing credits list every team and every manager she ever had.
It's a career, not an age
I never build a retirement party around being old. No jokes about slowing down, no rocking chairs, no gag gifts about memory. She's leaving with thirty-one years of experience, and the games should reflect that: what she built, who she trained, what the place was like when she arrived.
The funniest material is always work material anyway. The printer she named, the client call everyone still quotes, the reorg that moved her desk four times in a year.
Where to get the material
The retiree is your best source, and it's worth telling her about the games. Surprises at retirement parties tend to be less fun for the person being surprised than for everyone else. Ask her for dates, names and a few stories, and let her veto anything.
Then go to the longest-serving colleagues for photos and to HR for dates of promotions and office moves. Former colleagues are usually easy to find through her own contacts.
In the office or at a restaurant
In the office you usually have a conference room with a TV or a projector, the office Wi-Fi and forty minutes before people head home. Run the splash, the timeline, the quiz and the credits.
At an evening event in a restaurant you have more time, so add the photo round, the video greetings and the awards. Check the restaurant's screen and Wi-Fi when you book; colleagues' phones need internet for every round they answer themselves.
Remote and hybrid teams
Half her team might work from home or another office. Share the stage window in the video call you're already using for the remote people. They see the timeline and the quiz on their screens and answer from their own phones through the QR code, on the same scoreboard as the room.
Tell the remote colleagues the start time in advance. A retirement quiz is more fun with the whole team than with the ones who happen to be in the building.
Prep time
Plan two or three evenings for gathering photos, dates and questions, and one for building it. You can build and rehearse everything in the free 3-day demo, no card. For the real event the full version is a one-time license, not a subscription; current pricing is on pultevent.ru/en.
If your company does several retirements and anniversaries a year, that same license covers them all.
About the author
PULTEVENT was built by Ruslan Barashkin, who has hosted weddings, birthdays and office parties since 2014: over 500 events, best host of Moscow 2024 and of Saint Petersburg 2023 at the TOP 100 Awards. He made it for his own nights first. The rest is at pultevent.ru/en.
How to run retirement party games at work
- 1
Talk to the retiree about the games and collect dates, names and stories she's happy to share.
- 2
Collect old photos, the timeline events and three weeks of video greetings from former colleagues.
- 3
Have her closest colleagues write the quiz, and ask permission for every old photo.
- 4
Split the room into teams by department or by the teams she worked in.
- 5
Set up the room: screen, sound, Wi-Fi, and a video call for remote colleagues.
- 6
Play the rounds, run the awards, then roll the credits before the speeches or the toast.
FAQ
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