Heads up employees, there is a new legislation that proposes to stop your boss from calling you and assigning you duties after you have clocked out.
The Employment (Amendment) Bill, 2021, which is authored by Nandi Senator Samson Cherargei provides that an employee can disregard calls or any other form of communication such as email or text from their employer to perform some duties after the working hours.
“Where an employer contacts an employee during the period when there is no mutually agreed out of work hours, the employee shall not be obliged to respond,” the Bill reads in part.
The Bill defines “out of work hours” as hours other than those agreed upon between an employer and an employee in the contract of employment.
“This Bill seeks to address increased employee burnout. Digital connectivity has also been noted to be slowly eroding leisure time for employees hence affecting their work-life balance,” Cherargei said in his justification for the Bill.
An employer who forces his employees to undertake an assignment and fails to compensate you will be liable to a fine of Sh500,000 or spend one year in jail.
“The principal object of the Bill is to provide for the right to disconnect in the digital age. The right of employees to have their personal time and privacy respected,” Cherargei said as he defended the proposed law.
However, the Federation of Kenya Employers (FKE) has asked Senators to shoot it down arguing that the bill is too prescriptive by suggesting that employers should be required to develop policies to regulate phone usage by employees outside working hours.
This proposed bill is not new as legislators in Portugal passed a new law that deemed it illegal for bosses to text or call employees after working hours.
READ: Employees In Portugal Can ‘Bluetick’ Their Bosses After Work Hours
