"Good luck in your new role" is the beige of greeting card messages. Nobody objects to it. Nobody remembers it either.
The problem is that it is about the job, and the job is the least interesting thing here. They already know about the job. They have read the contract.
A new job card is really about the person leaving, and about the fact that everybody noticed.
From colleagues: be specific about what changes without them
The line that lands is the one that names the gap.
- "You are the only person here who answers Teams messages after four o'clock. We are all quietly terrified."
- "Whoever gets your desk is inheriting an impossible standard and no idea it exists."
- "Thank you for covering for me in March. I never properly said it. I am saying it now."
- "You made a genuinely tedious job good company for two years. That is not nothing."
- "Congratulations. Also, mild betrayal. Mostly congratulations."
If you barely know them, that is fine, say something true and small rather than something warm and generic. "We only overlapped on one project and you made it the easy one" is better than "you will be missed", because it could only have been written by you.
From a manager
Different job. You are on the record, and it will be read by someone deciding whether they made the right call.
- "You arrived able to do the job and left having changed how we do it. Thank you."
- "I have written a lot of these. This is the first one I have not had to think about."
- "You have earned this. Go and be excellent somewhere else, briefly, before you come back."
Avoid anything that sounds like a reference. A card is not a LinkedIn recommendation and everyone can tell when it has been written like one.
From friends and family
Here you can say the thing colleagues cannot: that the old job was making them miserable.
- "You have not sounded like yourself on a Sunday night for about a year. Very glad that is over."
- "Congratulations. You can stop doing the voice you do when you talk about work."
- "New job, same you, better Mondays. Thrilled for you."
- "I did not want to say anything, but that place was not good enough for you."
That last one is the message people actually keep, because it confirms something they were not sure anyone else had noticed.
If they were made redundant first
Different card entirely, and worth getting right.
Do not frame it as a rescue, and do not mention the redundancy at all unless they have been open about it. What they want is a card that treats this as a normal good thing happening to a capable person, because that is exactly what it is.
- "Delighted for you. They are lucky, and I suspect they know it."
- "Onwards. You have earned a boring, uneventful, well-paid year."
- "Congratulations. Nothing else to add. Just very pleased."
Short is kinder here. A long message invites a long reply about a period they may not want to revisit.
What to avoid
"They won't know what's hit them." Fine for a confident extrovert, quietly stressful for anyone starting somewhere new who is already anxious about it.
"Don't forget us!" It reads as a small guilt trip, and it puts the obligation on them in a week when they have none spare.
Inside jokes as the entire message. They are lovely at the top of a card, and useless as the whole thing. Somebody will read it in five years with none of the context.
A group card where everyone writes "good luck!" Twelve identical lines say nobody was asked to think. If you are organising it, ask people for one specific memory instead. It takes them the same thirty seconds and produces something worth keeping.
When to give it
Last day, not first day of the new job. The card belongs to the leaving, and it wants to be handed over in person if that is possible at all.
If they have already gone, or the team is remote, something digital that lands the same day beats a printed card that arrives at an office they no longer attend. If you want a physical one as well, a printed card can be posted to their home rather than the building they just left.
For a leaving card where the person is retiring rather than moving on, the register is different and worth reading separately. And if you are the one organising a group card, what to write in a leaving card for a colleague covers the awkward middle ground of people you barely know.
Browse more occasions or make a card with a photo of the team.
