You are speaking for the office, and his family is in the front row.

Two audiences are in that building and they need different things. Your colleagues want the version of him they recognise. His family wants the version they never got to see.

Write entirely for the family. The colleagues will get what they need on the way past, and it stops the speech becoming an in-joke that leaves the front row outside. If you were also his friend outside work, a eulogy for a friend is the page you want. If you sat near him for six years and never met his wife, read when you barely knew them as well.

You have a third of his life nobody else can describe.

What his family does not know, and would like to

• 01What was he like at 9am, before coffee?the small daily texture. His wife will recognise it and it will be the first time she has heard it from outside the house
• 02What did he say too often, in his exact words?every office has the phrase. Quote it. This is the line people will repeat at the reception
• 03Who did he look after that he did not have to?the new starter, the difficult client, the man on the night shift. Say the person’s name if they are in the room
• 04What was he better at than everyone else?concrete and specific, not a competency. “He could take a furious customer and have them apologising within 4 minutes”
• 05What did he talk about when he was not talking about work?usually them. Tell them what he said about his children, in his words. This is the paragraph that matters most

That last one is the whole reason you are up there. A wife who hears exactly what her husband said about her at his desk on a Tuesday has been given something nobody else at that funeral can give her.

Every Monday he told me what his daughter had done at the weekend, at length, whether or not I had asked. I now know more about competitive swimming than any man who has never been in a pool.

specific, dry, and it hands the family the thing they came to hear. Name the person if they are there

The register — this is where work speeches fail

• no job titles and no career arc“He joined in 2011 as a senior analyst and was promoted twice.” That is a CV read aloud at a funeral. His family knows where he worked. They want to know what he was like in a corridor.
• no “valued member of the team”Along with “consummate professional”, “went above and beyond” and “he will be greatly missed by all at”. Every one of these is a company sentence and a room can hear the difference instantly.
• not on behalf of the companySpeak as yourself, as a person who sat near him. If the company wants a statement, it can send flowers. You have 3 minutes and a first-person voice.
• no clients, no accounts, no numbersNothing he worked on matters today. If a story needs 2 sentences of context about a project, it is the wrong story.
• nothing about the restructure, the grievance or the stressEven if you believe the job contributed. Not at his funeral, not in front of his children, not in a sentence anyone could repeat afterwards.

Length, and where you sit in the order

Three minutes, not 5. You are almost certainly speaking after a family member, and your job is narrower than theirs.

Two hundred words a minute is a rush. Aim at 130. Three minutes is about 400 words, which is 1 page at 18 point.

Collect from 3 colleagues before you write

Message 3 people who worked with him with 1 question: “What is the first specific thing you think of when you think of Ray?” Not “any memories?”, which produces nothing.

Use 2 of the answers and attribute them out loud. “Priya reminded me that he kept a spare tie in his drawer for other people’s job interviews.” Attribution makes the speech the office’s rather than yours, which is what you were asked for.

If you are the manager

Then the family will be listening for whether you knew him as a person or as a resource, and they will know inside 2 sentences.

So do not evaluate him. No mention of performance, potential, or how hard he worked, which is a compliment that means nothing to a widow. Tell them one thing he did that you had no authority over.

And say his name often. In work speeches people drift into “he” and the man disappears into a role.

How to end it

Not with condolences. The family have had 40 of those this week and they are numb to the form.

There is a desk near the window that a lot of us are going to keep looking at for a while. That is not a small thing to leave behind in a place people only come to for money.

concrete, unsentimental, and true of nearly every workplace

Or end with the phrase he said too often, quoted, and nothing after it. That is the version most rooms remember.

• How do you write a eulogy for a coworker?

  Write it for his family, not for the office. You hold the third of his life they never saw, so tell them what he was like at 9am, what he said too often in his exact words, who he looked after that he did not have to, and above all what he said about them at his desk. Keep it to 3 minutes, about 400 words, and speak as yourself rather than on behalf of the company.

• What should you not say at a colleague’s funeral?

  Anything in a work register. No job titles, no career arc, no “valued member of the team”, “consummate professional” or “will be greatly missed by all at”. No clients, projects or numbers. And nothing about the restructure, the grievance or the stress, even if you believe the job contributed — not in front of his children, and not in a sentence someone could repeat afterwards.

• How long should a work eulogy be?

  Three minutes, about 400 words, which is 1 page at 18 point. You are usually speaking after a family member and your part is narrower than theirs. Aim to speak at about 130 words a minute rather than the 200 you will manage if you are nervous.

• What do you say if you are the manager speaking at an employee’s funeral?

  Do not evaluate him. Performance, potential and how hard he worked are compliments that mean nothing to a widow, and the family will decide inside 2 sentences whether you knew him as a person or as a resource. Tell them one specific thing he did that you had no authority over, use his name often rather than drifting into “he”, and end on something concrete rather than on condolences.