Technology management
Brazil ends the 6x1 schedule: keeping productivity with fewer hours
Brazil's maximum workweek will fall from 44 to 40 hours, with two days off. What technology solves, what it does not, and where to start before the deadline.
In 30 seconds
- 01Brazil's Senate approved the end of the 6x1 schedule: a 40-hour maximum workweek and two days off, phased in from promulgation.
- 02Running the same operation with fewer hours means removing manual work, not just reshuffling shifts.
- 03Start by measuring where hours go today. Automation and integration belong where there is repetition and rework.
On October 14, Brazil’s Senate approved the constitutional amendment that ends the 6x1 schedule (six days of work for one day off). The text cuts the maximum workweek from 44 to 40 hours and guarantees two paid days of rest, with no salary reduction. Because the Senate kept the version approved by the Chamber of Deputies in May, the amendment goes straight to promulgation.1
The transition has two steps: 60 days after promulgation, companies move to a 5x2 schedule capped at 42 hours; twelve months later, the cap drops to 40. For anyone running retail, logistics, customer service or manufacturing, the math is simple: the same operation will have fewer hours available.
It is not just a scheduling problem
The first reaction is usually to redesign shifts. That is necessary, but not enough. If a meaningful share of hours goes into manual, repetitive tasks today, reshuffling the schedule just spreads the same waste across fewer hours.
Before discussing how many people are missing, find out how many hours go into work no customer ever notices.
Where technology really helps
In the projects we follow, recovered hours usually come from three places:
What technology does not solve
Technology does not replace reviewing the process. Automating a bad workflow only makes the mistake happen faster. And some activities depend on physical presence, like serving at a counter or running a machine, where gains come more from planning than from software.
Company size matters too: the Senate debate itself recorded concerns about the cost for micro and small businesses.2 For them, the path is usually to start with what pays back in weeks, not months.
In practice · where to start
- List the tasks that consume the most hours per week in each area.
- Flag the ones that involve copying data from one place to another.
- Estimate the hours for each and start with the three largest.
This assessment takes a few days and already shows whether the problem is process, systems or scheduling.
The clock starts at promulgation
With 60 days for the first step, whoever leaves it for later will be improvising. An assessment now lets you choose what to automate, what to integrate and what to reorganize, and reach the 40-hour week with the operation running.
Footnotes
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Senado aprova fim da escala 6x1 e redução da jornada de trabalho, Agência Brasil, Oct 14, 2026 (in Portuguese). ↩
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Same report. Dieese, a Brazilian labor research institute, estimates 26.8 million workers will benefit, formal and informal. ↩