Starting this Wednesday, the final stage of the gradual reduction of the workweek established by Law 2101 of 2021 will come into effect. With this change, workers will go from working 44 hours a week to 42, without this affecting their salary or social benefits.
Although the measure aims to strengthen the balance between employees’ personal and work life, it also represents challenges for companies operating in the country, which will see an increase in the cost per hour worked.
In addition, it should not be forgotten that the law also establishes that the obligation to grant one day each semester to spend with family will disappear. All these changes will require companies to review their schemes and schedules to avoid affecting their operations.
“It not only means working less; companies will have to review their operating models and the economic impact that a more expensive working hour will have on the payroll. We are facing a transformation that demands anticipation, planning, and review of operating models from a financial and work schedule organization perspective,” says Andrés Duque, associate at the firm Godoy.
According to a report by the Colombian Federation of Human Management (Acrip), 51.2 percent of the companies surveyed said they had implemented a shift rescheduling to avoid affecting their operations due to the shorter workweek, 48.2 percent reported having made a cultural change, and 30.1 percent, an organizational restructuring.
“It is a measure that favors employee well-being but constitutes an important challenge for organizations since they must adjust processes to ensure effective productivity without additional costs,” said Juan Carlos Ramírez, president of Acrip.
In this same study, companies said that the biggest challenge in light of these changes is being able to maintain productivity in less time, followed by shift reconfiguration, the financial impact due to additional costs and overtime, maintaining the promise of customer service, and the urgency of an organizational cultural change.
Is your company prepared?
According to Marcela Garzón Posada, director of the virtual Business Administration program at Areandina, to know if a company is ready or not to implement the 42-hour workweek, you must check if it redesigned processes before reaching the new limit.
“If it kept objectives, workload, and performance measurement intact, it is most likely that the adjustment will end up falling on the same people. This may initially seem like a viable solution, but in the medium term, it translates into organizational fatigue, loss of quality, and higher talent turnover,” she said.
Likewise, she stated that poor management of the workweek could push some organizations toward more outsourcing, more informality, or fewer formal hires to compensate for the adjustment made.
“A company does not show that it understood the new workweek because it changed the schedule in a circular but when it can sustain results without squeezing the same teams, when it organizes with data, and when it stops using additional time as a permanent solution,” the professor asserted.
More changes
This adjustment comes in a context where companies have already been managing other recent changes that are affecting their wage costs due to the labor reform of Gustavo Petro’s government.
Since July 1 of this year, the surcharge for working on a Sunday and holiday increased from 80 to 90 percent. Also, this year the night shift started at 7 p.m. instead of 9 p.m. as before, and, with this, workers must receive a 35 percent surcharge from that hour. It is also important to highlight that a new holiday was created in Colombia, Our Lady of the Rosary of Chiquinquirá, which was this Monday the 13th.
The greatest impact would be on micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises in the country, which make up more than 99 percent of the business fabric and generate about 80 percent of formal employment, and in sectors such as commerce, tourism, restaurants, transportation, security, health, logistics, and continuous services, since much of their operation takes place during Sundays, holidays, or at night.
“SMEs will be the most vulnerable because they have less financial capacity to hire additional staff or quickly invest in automation and new technologies. Large companies have greater possibilities to absorb these costs through economies of scale, while a small company often operates with reduced teams and very narrow margins,” said María Elena Ospina, director of the association that brings them together, Acopi.
In response, the president of the merchants’ association Fenalco, Jaime Alberto Cabal, said that companies will suffer a new blow and that the increase in labor costs due to these measures could be between 8 and 12 percent.
‘The total cost of hiring a formal worker during 2026 may have increased between 20 and 30%,’ María Elena Ospina, president of Acopi
How much do they estimate costs will increase for small businesses with the reduction to a 42-hour workweek?
We estimate that this change represents an increase close to 9.5 percent in the cost per hour of work compared to the 46-hour workweek. However, the impact may be greater because many companies will have to hire additional staff, increase overtime pay, or reorganize shifts to maintain their production and service levels.
In labor-intensive sectors, the total increase in labor costs may range between 3 and 8 percent, depending on the activity and the possibility of automating processes. For a micro or small company, whose profit margins are usually below 5 percent, this increase can mean the difference between remaining competitive or losing growth capacity.
How does this situation add to other government announcements that are impacting them?
The reduction of the workweek cannot be analyzed in isolation. It is part of an accumulation of decisions that have significantly increased the cost of generating formal employment, such as the minimum wage increase, higher night and Sunday surcharges, the new holiday, or higher financial costs that, although they have decreased, remain high for many SMEs. From Acopi, we have warned that, in many cases, the total cost of hiring a formal worker during 2026 may have increased between 20 and 30 percent compared to previous years, depending on the sector and the operation of each company.
How are companies preparing to be affected as little as possible?
They are making a great adaptation effort. Among the main strategies are: reorganization of shifts and schedules, increased investment in digitization and automation, process optimization to improve productivity, training human talent to increase efficiency, or implementing artificial intelligence tools to reduce repetitive tasks, among others.
However, we insist that productivity does not increase by decree; it requires investment, access to technology, training, financing, and adequate conditions for companies to adapt. Our call is for labor policies to be accompanied by real support measures. If we want to protect employment, we must ensure that companies have the capacity to continue growing, investing, and hiring workers.