The Kenya Employment and Labor Relations Court has raised the bar for companies trying to lay off staff, ruling that a redundancy claim only holds up if the employer can actually prove the job became unnecessary, not just assert it.
The decision came in a case brought by Byron Otega against Nokia Solutions and Networks Kenya, the telecom equipment firm.
According to Business Daily, Otega had worked at Nokia since 2013, eventually rising to Account Manager for Network Infrastructure on the Safaricom Ethiopia account, earning a basic salary of KES 8 million a year plus a KES 1.8 million car allowance and sales incentives.
In 2023, Nokia reorganized the teams handling its Safaricom contracts in both Kenya and Ethiopia. Otega was told in May that year that his role would be made redundant, and his employment ended at the end of July.
He fought the decision, claiming it was payback for complaints he had filed through Nokia’s internal ethics system about bullying and harassment by his manager. He also said the company never properly consulted him or looked at whether he could be kept on in some other capacity.
Nokia pushed back, telling the court the redundancy was part of a genuine restructuring meant to improve efficiency, and that it had followed the rules: notifying the labor officer, consulting staff, giving redundant employees first crack at other openings, and paying out statutory benefits.
The court wasn’t convinced. Judges found that Nokia had actually hired new account managers in Ethiopia shortly before declaring Otega’s position redundant, which undercut the claim that the work itself had disappeared.
The ruling stated plainly that citing restructuring isn’t enough on its own. Employers have to show real evidence that a business decision, whether it’s adopting new technology, merging roles, or shutting down a unit, genuinely eliminated the need for that employee.
The court also found Nokia failed on two other fronts: it never properly consulted Otega before deciding to terminate him, and it never ran a fair process to compare him against others doing similar work before settling on him as the one to go.
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One part of Otega’s case didn’t succeed. He had also sought KES 1.7 million in unpaid sales incentives, but the court said he hadn’t brought enough evidence to back that claim and threw it out.
On the redundancy itself, though, the Kenya Labor court sided fully with Otega, ruling it unfair and unlawful and ordering Nokia to pay him KES 9.8 million, equal to a year’s worth of gross salary and car allowance.
The ruling sets a clearer standard for companies in Kenya going through restructuring. It’s no longer enough to declare a position redundant and follow the paperwork.
Businesses now need to be ready to prove, with real evidence, that the job actually vanished, that they picked the right employee to let go through a fair process, and that they genuinely consulted with the person before pulling the trigger.
