Once a company decides to hire in Kenya through an employer of record, the next decision matters more than most teams realise: which provider. The EOR will hold your employees' contracts, file your PAYE, represent the employment relationship in any dispute, and handle your staff's personal data. Every provider promises compliance. The differences surface later — when a filing is late, a termination is challenged at the Employment and Labour Relations Court, or an invoice arrives with line items nobody mentioned at the proposal stage. If you are still weighing whether EOR is the right structure at all, start with our guide on what an employer of record in Kenya actually is. If you have made that decision, these are the ten questions that separate a genuine Kenya EOR from a reseller with a brochure.
1. Are You the Direct Legal Employer, or a Platform Reselling One?
This is the single most important question. Many global EOR platforms do not employ anyone in Kenya. They sub-contract the legal employment to a local Nairobi partner, add a margin, and manage the relationship through a dashboard. That structure is not illegal — but it means the entity that actually holds your employees' contracts, carries the statutory liability, and answers to KRA is a company you have never met and cannot call. When something goes wrong, you escalate through a support queue in another time zone while the real employer sits three kilometres from your staff.
Ask directly: "Is the entity that will sign my employees' contracts your own Kenya-registered company, and can I visit its offices?" Two Max Group employs all EOR staff directly through our Nairobi entity — the same entity that holds the KRA, NSSF, and SHIF registrations. We wrote a detailed comparison of the direct-employer and platform models in our Deel alternative for Kenya guide.
2. Which Statutory Registrations Do You Hold — and Can You Prove Them?
A legitimate Kenya EOR must hold, in its own name: a Certificate of Incorporation under the Companies Act 2015, an active KRA PIN with PAYE obligations, NSSF employer registration, SHIF employer registration with the Social Health Authority, and registration as a data controller or processor with the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner (ODPC). Ask for the registration numbers and verify them — KRA PIN status can be checked on iTax, and ODPC maintains a public register. A provider that hesitates to share registration details is telling you something.
3. What Is Your Statutory Filing Track Record?
Kenya's filing calendar is unforgiving: PAYE, NSSF, SHIF, and Housing Levy all fall due by the 9th of the following month, and a single late P10 return attracts a 5% penalty plus 1% compounding monthly interest. Under an EOR arrangement the penalty is legally the EOR's — but the operational disruption, the KRA scrutiny, and the risk to your staff's statutory records are yours. Ask: "Have you ever incurred a late filing penalty on any client account?" Two Max Group's record since 2011 is zero late filings and zero KRA penalties across 385+ client organisations. Any provider should be able to answer this question in one sentence.
4. How Is Your Fee Structured?
EOR fees in Kenya follow three models: a fixed monthly fee per employee, a percentage of gross salary (typically 10–20%), or a hybrid minimum-plus-percentage. Percentage models penalise you for hiring senior people — at a KES 400,000 gross salary, a 15% fee is KES 60,000 per month for exactly the same administrative work as a junior hire. Two Max Group charges a flat USD 150 per employee per month regardless of salary level. Our Kenya EOR costs guide breaks down the full cost stack — management fee, gross salary, and statutory employer contributions — with worked examples at three salary levels.
5. What Exactly Does the Fee Include?
Request a written scope list and check it against this baseline: Employment Act-compliant contract drafting; monthly gross-to-net payroll computation; P10 PAYE filing on iTax; NSSF Tier I and II remittance; SHIF and Affordable Housing Levy remittance; payslip generation; annual P9 certificates and P10 reconciliation; leave administration; disciplinary procedure support; and termination handling. Common exclusions that appear later as invoices: work permit support, HR advisory "incidents", off-cycle payroll runs, and currency conversion margins. If payroll processing items are billed separately from the EOR fee, the headline price is not the real price.
6. Who Drafts the Employment Contracts, and to What Standard?
Section 10 of the Employment Act requires written particulars covering the full set of statutory terms — parties, remuneration, hours, place of work, leave, notice, and more. A contract missing any of these exposes the employer in any subsequent dispute, because the Act resolves ambiguity in the employee's favour where the employer failed to keep proper particulars. Ask to see a template contract before signing, and ask who maintains it as the law changes. Two Max Group contracts are maintained by our labour relations and HR advisory team and updated for every Employment Act amendment and Wages Order revision.
7. How Do You Handle Terminations and Disputes?
Termination is where EOR arrangements are stress-tested. Kenya law requires both substantive justification and procedural fairness — including the section 41 hearing — before termination, and getting this wrong costs up to twelve months' gross salary in compensation. Ask the provider: who conducts the disciplinary process, who attends the hearing, who calculates final dues, and who is the respondent if the matter reaches the Employment and Labour Relations Court? A competent EOR runs the entire procedure and stands as the legal respondent. Our guide on employee termination in Kenya explains what a compliant process looks like step by step.
8. Can You Employ and Pay Expatriates?
If your Kenya plans include foreign staff, the EOR must be able to support work permit applications, obtain KRA PINs for foreign nationals, and run expat payroll — including foreign currency salary components and the tax treatment of benefits like housing and school fees. Many EOR providers quietly decline expatriate employment because the immigration workflow is demanding. Confirm capability before you sign, not when your country director's permit application is due. Our Kenya work permit guide covers the permit classes and timelines involved.
9. How Is Employee Data Protected?
Payroll files contain names, national IDs, KRA PINs, bank details, and salary data — sensitive personal data under the Data Protection Act 2019. The EOR must be ODPC-registered, must offer a signed data processing agreement, and must use encrypted channels for payroll data exchange. Ask where the data is stored, who can access it, and what happens to it if the engagement ends. ODPC enforcement actions are increasing, and the reputational cost of a payroll data leak lands on your brand, not just the provider's.
10. What Happens When We Outgrow the EOR?
A good EOR engagement should end well. Most companies that scale past fifteen to twenty Kenya employees eventually incorporate their own entity — and the EOR should manage that transition: contract novation to your new company, NSSF and KRA registration transfers, and payroll continuity with no gap in statutory filings. Ask whether the provider supports this, what it costs, and whether the contract contains exit penalties or long notice periods designed to trap you. Two Max Group handles the full transfer as standard, and our company registration service can run the incorporation in parallel. The decision framework is covered in our comparison of EOR vs company registration in Kenya.
Red Flags That Should End the Conversation
- No verifiable Kenya entity: if the provider cannot name the Kenya company that will appear on your employees' contracts, walk away.
- Quotes that exclude statutory employer costs: a price that omits employer NSSF and Housing Levy is designed to look cheap and surprise you later.
- No template contract available for review: the contract is the product; a provider unwilling to show it has something to hide.
- Percentage fees with no cap: your cost of compliance should not scale with your generosity to employees.
- Vague answers on misclassification: a provider that offers to keep your team on "contractor agreements" to save cost is transferring the risk to you — see our guide on contractor vs employee classification in Kenya.
Putting It Together
The right Kenya EOR is a local legal employer with verifiable registrations, a clean filing record, a flat and fully inclusive fee, court-tested HR procedures, and a clear exit path. Ask all ten questions of every provider on your shortlist and the differences will be obvious within a week. If you want to benchmark answers, talk to Two Max Group — we will answer all ten in writing, with registration numbers, a template contract, and a worked all-in cost example for your exact roles. If you are ready to move, our team can have your first Kenya hire employed and on payroll within 48 hours.
