40-Hour Workweek in Mexico: Lessons from Spain, Colombia, the US, and Chile

The reduction of the workweek has moved beyond a mere discussion of working fewer hours. International experience shows that countries that have made progress in this area have also had to rethink work organization, flexibility, family-life balance, digitalization, and how productivity is measured.

For years, working longer hours was associated with better results. However, various markets have demonstrated that an organization’s efficiency does not necessarily depend on the number of hours its employees spend at their posts, but rather on its ability to better manage talent, resources, and operations.

For Mexico, which is beginning to transition to a new workweek scheme, the experiences of other countries offer benchmarks regarding the challenges companies might face and the measures they can adopt to anticipate the change.

“In Mexico, where the discussion on reducing the workweek is in its first year of change, observing these international cases offers an opportunity to understand what it entails to prepare organizations to manage time, resources, and operations more intelligently within the framework of a new law,” stated María Velásquez, Head of Growth at GeoVictoria, a technology company specializing in labor attendance management and control.

Based on the processes implemented in Spain, Colombia, the United States, and Chile, the company identifies four key learnings that could be relevant for Mexican organizations.

Spain: Reducing Hours Also Means Improving Work-Life Balance

Spain is advancing a transformation in its labor market that includes reducing the maximum workweek from 40 to 37.5 hours, accompanied by other policies focused on facilitating work-life balance.

Among these measures is the parental leave and child care benefit, through which each parent is entitled to 19 weeks of paid leave at 100% of their salary.

The contrast with Mexico is considerable. Currently, paternity leave in Mexico consists of five working days with full pay.

The Spanish experience highlights that labor market transformation is not limited to modifying the number of hours worked. It also requires creating conditions that allow for better time distribution and progress towards greater family co-responsibility and a balance between personal and professional life.

Colombia: Fewer Hours Demand Better Time Management

Colombia began a gradual process in 2023 to reduce its workweek from 48 to 42 hours. This transition has forced companies to review the distribution of schedules, shifts, and workloads to maintain operational continuity.

For Mexican companies, one of the primary challenges will be precisely reorganizing available time without compromising productivity.

This implies having more precise information on attendance, schedules, operational loads, and personnel availability, as well as developing mechanisms that allow for faster decision-making.

Therefore, the reduction of working hours also represents a challenge in planning and human resource management.

United States: Flexibility Changes How Productivity is Measured

Although the United States maintains a 40-hour workweek as a benchmark, a portion of its organizations has moved towards hybrid and flexible schemes, along with work models oriented towards objective achievement.

In Mexico, these types of modalities still have a limited presence.

According to the National Survey on Time Use (ENUT), in 2024, 95.1% of the employed or wage-earning population—meaning those who work under a subordinate labor relationship—performed their activities exclusively in person. In contrast, only 2.9% operated under a hybrid scheme.

This data reflects one of the challenges facing Mexican organizations: evolving from models where physical presence serves as one of the main performance indicators to others where productivity can be primarily evaluated based on results.

Chile: Anticipation Can Reduce Transition Costs

Chile is also moving towards the gradual implementation of a shorter workweek. One of the lessons from this process has been the importance of preparing the necessary systems, tools, and processes in advance to comply with the new regulations.

According to GeoVictoria, some organizations that delayed this adaptation had to implement solutions in a hurried manner, leading to duplicated processes, increased costs, and even the replacement of recently acquired technologies that did not meet the new operational needs.

For Mexico, this experience presents an opportunity for planning.

“Companies have the opportunity to prepare in advance. Having technological partners that facilitate regulatory compliance, automate attendance management, and provide reliable information for audits will allow them to face this change more efficiently and avoid the challenges that organizations in other markets have already encountered,” Velásquez pointed out.

What Can Mexico Learn?

International experiences suggest that reducing the workweek is only one part of a broader labor market transformation.

Flexibility, family-life balance, process digitalization, planning, and more efficient time management emerge as relevant factors for companies to adapt without compromising their productivity levels.

For Mexican organizations, the challenge will be to leverage the transition not only to comply with new regulations but also to review how they distribute workloads, utilize technology, and evaluate the performance of their employees.

In this regard, the discussion about working fewer hours also opens a broader conversation: how to build organizations capable of producing better, managing their resources more efficiently, and responding to the new expectations of the labor market.

The entry

first appears on Líder Empresarial.