Statutory redundancy severance and package.
Total package
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Severance
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Notice pay
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Leave pay
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What you are owed when a role is made redundant
Losing a job to redundancy is stressful enough without having to argue about the maths. Kenya's Employment Act gives a redundant employee a statutory floor: severance pay calculated at 15 days of pay for every completed year of service. On top of that, an employer normally has to give notice or pay in lieu of it, and settle any leave you earned but did not take. This calculator pulls those three pieces together so you can sanity-check the figure your employer puts in front of you, or work out roughly what to expect before the conversation happens.
It is written for employees facing redundancy and for small-business owners and HR staff who need to compute a fair package. Redundancy has a specific legal meaning, broadly the loss of a job because the role itself is no longer needed, so it is different from dismissal for misconduct or simply resigning. If your exit is not a genuine redundancy, the severance rule here may not apply at all.
Turning a monthly salary into a daily rate
The part people get wrong is the daily rate. Severance is expressed in days, but you are paid monthly, so the figure has to be converted. The method this calculator uses, which follows the common reading of the Act, takes your monthly gross, multiplies by twelve to annualise it, then divides by 365. That gives a calendar-day rate, not a working-day rate, and it deliberately spreads the salary across every day of the year rather than dividing by thirty. Using 30 days or counting only working days would both produce the wrong number, usually an inflated one. Once you have the daily rate, severance is simply that rate times 15 times your completed years of service. Completed years matters too: a stretch of eleven months does not round up to a full year for this purpose.
Five years on an 80,000 salary with a month's notice
Picture someone earning KES 80,000 a month who has completed five full years and is entitled to one month of notice, with no leave outstanding. The daily rate works out to KES 80,000 times 12, divided by 365, which is about KES 2,630. The table below traces the package exactly as the tool builds it.
| Component | Amount (KES) |
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The bar below stacks the package so you can see where the money comes from. Severance is the large dark block; notice pay is the teal block beside it. These are gross figures.
The grey area: tax on the payout
This is where you should tread carefully. The tool shows the gross package, and it deliberately does not apply tax, because the tax treatment of redundancy money in Kenya is not a single clean rule. Some elements can be treated differently from ordinary salary, and the position has shifted with recent Finance Acts, particularly around payments linked to ending employment and pension-type sums. So do not assume the gross figure here is what lands in your account. Confirm with the Kenya Revenue Authority, or get advice on your specific package, before you spend it.
A practical point worth raising: the 15-days-per-year severance is a statutory minimum, not a ceiling. Your contract, a collective agreement, or company policy can promise more generous terms, and if they do, the better deal usually wins. Read your employment contract alongside this estimate. If the numbers your employer offers fall short of the statutory floor without a clear reason, that is a red flag worth challenging.
Do I count a partial final year toward severance?
The statutory formula this calculator uses is built on completed years of service, so a part-year does not automatically count as a whole one for the 15-days calculation. In practice some employers pro-rate the final stub period and others do not, and disputes do arise. If your service includes a significant fraction of a year, raise it explicitly and ask how it has been treated, because it can move the total meaningfully.
Is notice pay always added on top of severance?
Where an employer ends the role without giving the contractual or statutory notice period, pay in lieu of notice is normally due in addition to severance, which is why the tool lets you enter notice months separately. If you actually work out your notice period instead, you are simply paid your normal salary for those weeks rather than a separate lump sum. Check whether your situation is pay in lieu or worked notice, as it changes how the package is described.