Set up the retirement book

The retirement book is a yearbook for employees who retire. Colleagues write farewell messages, and the retiring employee gets them as a book. There’s one book design for the whole company. This only runs if your company has a retirement program, which Vantage Circle sets up.

Design the book

1. Go to Recognition → Service milestone and open the Retirement tab.
2. Select Set up retirement book, or Edit retirement book if the book is already set up. If no program is listed yet, select Set up the retirement book.
3. On the Retirement book step, set the cover, text style and content. It works like the service yearbook, with three differences:
   • The Back cover message is required, up to 700 characters.
   • If you turn on Include leadership messages, every leader needs a Name, a Job title, a Message and a photo. Names and job titles can be up to 50 characters.
   • There are no employee stories. The book holds messages from leaders, colleagues and the employee’s manager. Show the employee’s manager message first puts the manager’s message at the front.
4. Select View sample yearbook to check the design.
5. If your company offers retirement catalogs, a Reward catalog step follows. Turn on Enable a catalog for retirement to choose specific gifts a retiring employee can pick, one country at a time. Leave it off and they choose from the full rewards catalog.
6. Select Save changes. You’ll see “Retirement book saved”.

The table on the Retirement tab then shows Book ready. The program name and its Reward points are set for your company and can’t be changed here.

For the cover and leader fields, see Set up the service yearbook. For catalogs, see Set up a milestone catalog.

What happens next

By default, the timing counts back from the retirement date in each employee’s record. Some companies have a different group of invited colleagues.

• About four weeks (28 days) before: everyone in the company gets an email inviting them to share their thoughts for the retiring colleague. The subject starts “Share your thoughts on Retirement for” and the employee’s name.
• 21 and 14 days before: reminder emails go out.
• 7 days before: the retirement points are added, and the employee gets an email with the book attached as a PDF. Their reporting manager is copied.

An employee who has turned off retirement posts in their profile isn’t included.

If something goes wrong

• “Add the back cover message.” Write a back cover message. It’s required for the retirement book.
• “Add a message, name, job title and photo for leader 2.” Fill in every field for that leader, or remove the leader.
• “Retirement book saved, but reward catalog not saved” Open the book again with Edit retirement book and save the catalog again.
• “Retirement program could not be loaded.” Reload the page and try again.