Colombia Completes Its Reduction of the Workweek to 42 Hours: Implications for Companies and Lessons for Costa Rica

From a business perspective, the change requires reviewing the relationship among available time, productivity, operational coverage and labor cost.

A reduction of six weekly hours equals 12.5% of the original 48-hour week. If salary stays the same, the salary cost per available ordinary hour rises by approximately 14.29%.

This calculation helps gauge one of the direct economic consequences of the reform, although its final impact depends on each company's structure and its ability to reorganize processes.

Schedule Flexibility as an Adaptation Tool

One of the interesting aspects of Colombian legislation is that it provides for different ways of organizing working time.

These include the flexible workday, which allows the 42 weekly hours to be distributed over five or six days by agreement between employer and employee.

Under the legally established conditions, daily working hours may range from a minimum of four continuous hours to a maximum of nine, without automatically triggering overtime surcharges, provided the applicable limits and requirements are respected.

There are also specific shift-work regimes, including arrangements that allow for activities requiring operational continuity.

These alternatives offer some room to adapt schedules to business needs, particularly when service demand varies during the week.

However, flexibility requires planning and clear agreements.

In Colombia, the so-called "workday by objectives" is not a stand-alone legal concept that allows time control to be dispensed with.

A company may organize certain activities around goals or results, but it must continue to respect legal working-time limits, rest periods, the recognition of overtime, and the rules on the right to disconnect.

This deserves attention in technology companies, shared services and regional operations, where performance evaluation is often tied to meeting objectives.

The risk arises when the assigned goals systematically require more time than the ordinary workday provides.

In such cases, an apparent productivity improvement may come with unrecognized overtime, evidentiary difficulties and possible labor claims.

Sectors with Continuous Operations Face Greater Difficulties

The experience shared by Claudia helps identify relevant differences between sectors.

Companies with administrative functions or professional services may find it easier to reorganize meetings, eliminate low-value activities or redistribute tasks.

The situation is different when the business needs to maintain a given level of coverage for many hours of the day or even operate nonstop.

In manufacturing, for example, production lines may require continuity for 16 or 24 hours. A reduction in working hours forces a review of rotations, handovers and the time devoted to cleaning, maintenance, quality controls and shift changes.

In healthcare, patient care requires staff to be available over continuous periods. Shift changes and the transfer of clinical information must be built into the planning of effective working time.

In private surveillance and security, contracted coverage may remain at 24 hours even though each worker has fewer ordinary weekly hours. This puts pressure on staffing levels, replacement costs and commercial rates.

Shared service centers, BPOs and contact centers face an additional difficulty: they often must meet service levels committed to clients located in other jurisdictions.

In these operations, the reduction of individual hours may require adjustments to team distribution, service hours, productivity indicators and hiring arrangements.

There is also a risk worth considering: trying to offset the reduction in working hours through excessive work intensification.

Maintaining identical workloads, deadlines and targets without reviewing processes can increase fatigue, turnover and psychosocial risks.

Therefore, planning must take into account both service continuity and the teams' real capacity to meet their responsibilities within the new schedule.

Economic Impact Also Depends on Overtime and Surcharges

Colombia's reduction in working hours coincides with other regulatory changes that affect operating costs.

Law 2466 of 2025 modified the regulation of night work, whose window begins at 7:00 p.m. as of December 25, 2025.

It also established a progressive increase in the surcharge for work on mandatory rest days, which rose to 90% in July 2026 and will reach 100% in July 2027, according to the legal schedule.

The combination of these measures is especially relevant for companies that operate at night, on weekends or on holidays.

A company may simultaneously face fewer ordinary hours available per worker, a higher relative cost per hour and an increase in certain surcharges.

In this context, systematically resorting to overtime to offset the reduction can be costly and create additional compliance risks.

The effects on commercial contracts entered into under previous cost structures must also be considered.

A security, maintenance or outsourced services company that has committed to a fixed number of coverage hours may struggle to maintain its margins if the contracted price does not include adequate review mechanisms.

In practice, this usually translates into the need to evaluate alternatives such as reorganizing shifts, adding staff, automating tasks, renegotiating commercial terms or modifying certain processes.

The solution will depend on the nature of the operation and the applicable legal and contractual constraints.

Time Control and the Right to Disconnect: Two Aspects Requiring Special Attention

One of the key lessons from the Colombian experience relates to the difference between the formally scheduled workday and the time actually worked.

Reducing the schedule set in a contract or internal policy is not enough if people continue to attend meetings, answer emails, prepare reports or handle requests after their workday ends.

Colombian law expressly recognizes the right to disconnect through Law 2191 of 2022.

This regulation must be considered together with the provisions on working hours and overtime.

It is also necessary to distinguish between a general expectation of availability and situations in which the worker remains subject to restrictions that effectively limit the use of their personal time.

Depending on the specific conditions, availability may have consequences for the recognition of working time and overtime.

For this reason, it is advisable for companies to keep mechanisms that document scheduled hours, agreed changes, hours actually worked and activities performed outside the ordinary workday.

In particular, flexible work arrangements require coordination among supervisors, Human Resources and payroll managers.

An informal schedule change or later compensation of hours could generate disputes if the records cannot show how the workday was actually organized and carried out.

For companies with regional structures, attention should be paid to requests coming from other jurisdictions, especially when time-zone differences lead to meetings or demands outside local working hours.

What Can Costa Rica Learn from the Colombian Experience?

Costa Rica maintains, as a general rule, a maximum ordinary daytime workday of eight hours per day and 48 hours per week, with differentiated limits for night and mixed shifts and the exceptions provided for in its legislation.

Colombia, by contrast, completed in July 2026 its transition to a maximum ordinary workweek of 42 hours.

This difference must be considered when a single organization manages personnel in both countries.

However, I believe the main value of the Colombian experience for Costa Rica lies in observing how a change in working time affects business decisions that may initially seem unrelated to the legal sphere.

Reducing working hours requires reviewing processes, performance indicators, supervision models, task distribution and control mechanisms.

It can also affect hiring needs, the organization of rest periods and the cost structure.

For a Costa Rican company voluntarily considering a reduction in working hours, it would be necessary to first analyze whether its operation can maintain service levels with fewer hours available and what the economic consequences of that decision would be.

In particular, three aspects should be kept in mind.

First, assess the operation before changing schedules. The reduction should be preceded by an analysis of workloads, peak-demand periods, coverage needs and activities that can be reorganized.

Second, review the legal consequences of the new arrangements. In Costa Rica, work exceeding the agreed ordinary workday or the applicable legal limits may give rise to overtime obligations. A voluntary reduction must therefore be designed with careful attention to contracts, internal policies and time-control mechanisms.

Third, ensure that objectives are compatible with the time available. Maintaining the same operational demands without adjusting resources or processes may result in part of the work being performed outside the established workday.

This last aspect is especially relevant for companies that use results-based management models or have teams reporting to regional structures.

The Colombian experience also invites us to consider the relationship between productivity and workplace well-being.

A shorter workday can promote rest, family balance and physical and mental recovery. However, these benefits may be limited if the reduction is accompanied by excessive task intensification or a permanent expectation of availability.

Business Planning Largely Determines the Outcome

Colombia has completed a significant regulatory transition, although its economic, labor and productivity effects still require monitoring and evaluation.

The experience helps identify some conditions that can ease business adaptation: advance planning, flexibility within legal limits, process review, reliable time-recording systems and coordination among the operations, finance and Human Resources areas.

For multinational companies, it is also advisable to avoid automatically applying a single regional working-hours policy without considering the legal particularities of each jurisdiction.

A corporate decision aimed at reducing hours or harmonizing working conditions can have different consequences depending on the country, the existing contractual or legal workday and the nature of the activities. o legal

My recommendation would be to approach any significant change in working hours through a joint assessment of its legal, economic and operational effects before defining the implementation scheme.

The Colombian experience offers a useful reference for Costa Rican companies: reducing working time can open opportunities to improve work organization and well-being, provided there is planning that sustains productivity, meets legal obligations and preserves business continuity.

GuatemalaAlegalisOct 13