How Much Do You Actually Put in a Leaving Collection?

In short: £3 to £5 is normal for a colleague you barely worked with, £5 to £10 for someone on your team, and £10 to £20 for a long-serving colleague or a manager. UK office pots average around £139 from about eleven contributors, which is £12.89 each. Giving less than the suggestion is fine, and in a properly run collection nobody can see what you gave.

The envelope arrives at your desk on a Wednesday afternoon with a name biro’d on the front and no further instructions.

Somewhere in the next thirty seconds you have to decide two things. How much, and whether the amount you are about to put in says something about you that you did not intend to say.

That second question is the reason this article exists. Most people are not confused about generosity. They are trying to work out what is normal, because nobody tells you and everybody can see the envelope.

The short answer, by how well you knew them

The most useful published breakdown comes from PocketWell, a UK collection app, and it splits by relationship rather than giving a single number. Checked on 20 August 2026, its bands are:

Who is leaving	Typical contribution
An occasional colleague	£3 to £5
A close teammate	£5 to £10
A long-serving colleague or a manager	£10 to £20
Someone retiring	£15 to £30 or more

That maps to how most offices behave. The person two desks over whose name you know gets a fiver. The person you worked next to for four years gets more, and you would probably have bought them a drink anyway.

What the pot usually comes to

Collection Pot, a UK workplace collecting platform, published an analysis of its own pots that was reported in October 2022. Across occasions the average pot was £138.65, with an average individual contribution of £12.89.

Leaving collections drew an average of 11.4 contributors. Retirement pots were the largest at £235.27 from 18.3 people, and weddings drew the highest individual amounts at £20.92 a head.

Two things to hold in mind before treating those as gospel. The data is four years old. And it describes people already using an online collection tool, which is a self-selecting group, so treat it as the shape rather than the measurement.

Still, £139 from eleven people is a useful anchor. It tells you the room is not expecting £25 from everyone.

When you cannot afford it

This is the part most articles skip, so here it is plainly.

You do not have to contribute. There is no obligation, no requirement to explain, and no correct amount. A leaving card with something specific written in it is a complete gesture on its own, and the person leaving is far more likely to reread the card in five years than to remember the total.

If money is tight, £2 in an envelope is a contribution. So is nothing.

The awkwardness people feel here is almost entirely a design problem rather than a money problem. An envelope going desk to desk is visible. Everybody can see roughly what everybody else did, and the person having a difficult month has to perform something in front of colleagues. That is a flaw in the envelope, not in them.

Which is the argument for running collections where amounts are private. When nobody can see who gave what, or whether they gave at all, the person who cannot spare it this month just does not, and nothing about that is visible to anyone.

If you are the one organising it

Four things do most of the work.

Suggest a range, not a figure, and say the bottom of it out loud. “Anything from £5 is lovely, and please do not feel obliged” works better than “£10 each”. It answers the normality question while making the low end explicitly acceptable.

Give it three to five working days. Long enough for people who are out of the office, short enough that nobody forgets. A collection running for a fortnight is a collection you will be chasing.

Include the people who are not in the building. Remote and hybrid colleagues get missed constantly by an envelope, and they are often the ones who most want to contribute because they will not be at the leaving do either.

Say what it is for and when it closes, once, in writing. Then stop. A second reminder is fine. A third is pursuit.

The envelope problem

The traditional method is one person, an A4 envelope, and several laps of the office between Wednesday and Friday. It has real drawbacks beyond the visibility.

Cash excludes anyone who does not carry it, which is most people now. It excludes everyone working from home entirely. It leaves one colleague carrying £140 in a drawer, and it gives them the job of remembering who has already been asked.

The bank transfer version fixes the cash problem and makes the visibility worse, because people announce in the group chat that they have sent it.

A shared collection link avoids both. People open it, give what they want, and it takes half a minute from a phone whether they are at a desk or at home. Planiit’s leaving collections process contributions through Stripe into the organiser’s own connected account, so Planiit never holds the money and adds no fee for the people chipping in. Amounts stay private throughout. At the end, the total becomes a gift card the leaver chooses from, which solves the other perennial problem, that a group of colleagues guessing what somebody wants is rarely a good bet.

What about the awkward ones

Not every departure is a happy one, and the tone should follow the circumstances.

Redundancy. Handle with care and take a lead from the person. Some appreciate the gesture. Others find a collection uncomfortable, because it marks an event they did not choose. If in doubt, a card that everyone signs is safer than a pot, and it is easy to add money later if the mood is right.

Someone leaving under a cloud. A collection that half the office declines to join is worse than no collection. Read the room before you start one.

Maternity leave. Not a leaving collection, because they are coming back. Amounts tend to be lower, and the gift is usually for the baby rather than the person, which changes what to buy.

Common questions

How much should you give for a work leaving gift in the UK?

Between £3 and £5 for a colleague you rarely worked with, £5 to £10 for someone on your team, and £10 to £20 for a long-serving colleague or a manager. Retirements attract more, usually £15 to £30 or above.

What is the average office collection in the UK?

Around £138.65 per pot from an average of 11.4 contributors for a leaving collection, according to Collection Pot platform data reported in October 2022. The average individual contribution across all occasions was £12.89.

Is it rude not to contribute to a leaving collection?

No. Contributions are voluntary and nobody is owed an explanation. Signing the card is a complete gesture, and in a collection where amounts are private, not contributing is invisible to everyone including the organiser.

How long should a leaving collection run?

Three to five working days. Long enough to catch people who are away or working from home, short enough that it stays in people’s minds rather than being forgotten.

Should the manager give more than everyone else?

There is no rule, and plenty of managers do give more towards a long-serving leaver. The reason to keep contributions private is precisely so that this never becomes visible or comparable.

How do you include remote workers in an office collection?

Use a shared link rather than an envelope. Cash and desk-to-desk collections exclude everyone who is not in the building that week, which is often the people who will also miss the leaving do.

Is a leaving gift from colleagues taxable?

A gift funded by colleagues out of their own pockets is generally treated as a gift between individuals rather than as pay. Where the employer contributes, the position is different and payroll should be asked. This is general information rather than tax advice. There is more on running a larger pot in what a retirement collection raises.

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Set up a free leaving collection, share one link with the team, and turn the total into a gift card at planiit.io.