Dear Anonymous My advice will predominantly stem from the legal perspective. Nevertheless, it would be general legal advice. If you need specific legal advice, it would be judicious for you to consult an attorney. Before defining insubordination at length, it is vital to understand your contract of employment with your employer. What is the scope and course of your employment? What are your responsibilities? How far and wide are they? What are the duties that are incidental to your contract? Your contract of employment is your work blue print and determinant of how you ought to traverse the trajectory of employment. I presume that the duties that your immediate boss is apportioning to you are outside your job description. Moreover, that they are not incidental to your contract of employment.
Even if such duties are within your job specification and incidental to your contract of employment at large, the definition of insubordination at large in the subsequent paragraphs will sharpen your insight. For an employee to be held insubordinate and dismissed thereafter it must be depicted that;
a) An instruction or order was given to an employee. In the absence of instructions or orders from your immediate boss, the test for insubordination will be incomplete. You have already enunciated that your immediate boss allocates work to you. This constitutes an instruction or order granted to you by her.
b) The instruction was lawful. It is not sufficient for an employee to be conferred orders or instructions. Such orders must be lawful. When the instructions accorded to the employee are unlawful, the employee is entitled by law to dissent to such instructions on the basis of unlawfulness. An instruction will generally be lawful to the extent it relates to the contract of employment. If the instructions given by your employer are within the parameters of your contract of employment, they are deemed lawful.
If not, then they are unlawful.
c) The instruction was reasonable. An instruction may be lawful and reasonable. On the other hand, an instruction may be lawful yet unreasonable. Reasonableness speaks to fairness, practicality and good judgment for the order given to the employee. Unreasonable orders are devoid of fairness, practicality and good judgment of the instruction granted to the worker. From what you have said, your immediate boss is in the habit of apportioning her responsibilities to you at the 11th hour and expects you to diligently perform them nevertheless.
Given that she is your immediate boss, it may be incidental to your duties to hold fort for her when she has emergencies. Occasional emergencies may justify her last-minute instructions to you; therefore, in some instances such instructions may be reasonable. Nonetheless, if unrelenting high time instructions are given to you by your immediate boss and you are expected to adhere to them even if they interfere with your overall work productivity and your immediate boss disregards/ignores the fact that her relentless 11th hour instructions cause your work progress to nosedive, such constitute unreasonable instructions. It may therefore be prudent for you to decline your boss’s instructions in writing and deduce why they are lawful yet unreasonable or both unlawful and unreasonable. This will create a record that can salvage you in the future.
d) The refusal to obey must have been enough to warrant dismissal. It is for the employer to show cause why refusal to obey their instruction warrants a dismissal. Obviously if it can be proven that the instructions given to you were lawful and reasonable, dismissal would be warranted; destitute of such, dismissal would be unwarranted.
In your case, dismissal is unwarranted as the instructions you are given are unreasonable. e) Even if the instruction may be lawful and reasonable the employee may have good cause for declining to adhere to the instruction or order granted. Good causes for declining reasonable and lawful instructions may include emergencies that only the employee can attend to, the unjustifiable expectation by an employer for an employee’s work to be eternally up-to-date even when the employee is continuously riddled and overwhelmed with work that immeasurably disrupts their daily work schedule etc. Conclusively, insubordination commonly arises where all of the elements of insubordination in the foregoing paragraphs A-D are satisfied. Where there is a default on all or any of the aforesaid conditions in paragraphs A-E, an employee cannot be held insubordinate.
Gaone Monau is an attorney and motivational speaker. For bookings on gender-based violence awareness seminars, corporate training on specific areas of the law; relationships, confidence building, stress management and self-discovery contact +26774542732. Her email address is [email protected]. Her Facebook page is Be Motivated with Gaone.
