How Flexible Work Supports 7 of the UN Sustainable Development Goals

In today’s world of Covid-19, flexible and remote working options are fast becoming the norm, rather than the once-exception to the rule. But, did you know that besides keeping us safe and healthy, the power of flexible work can really make the world a better place. Here’s a quick look at how it can help support 7 of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals:

1. Goal 3. The third goal of the UN is to ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages. Well, this seems to come as a no-brainer in these times of Covid-19, but as we have seen from our recent dive into flexible working options, it also helps people focus on their diet, exercise, relationships, leisure and passions.

2. Goal 5. This one is about achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls. This one comes down to saving time from commutes to the workplace and simply being at home, increases time and awareness for both men and women to equally share household responsibilities.

3. Goal 7. This goal aims to ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all. Working from home is one of the unsexy yet highly effective ways to improve energy efficiency by simply using less. One of the most obvious ways this works is by reducing the need to waste energy for the work commute, among many others.

4. Goal 8. The eight goal of proposed by the UN is to promote sustained, inclusive, and sustainable economic growth; full and productive employment; and decent work for all. How flexible working options come in is in two ways. Firstly, traffic congestion costs employers and employees billions of dollars of loss across the world. Secondly, working from home simply makes people more engaged and efficient.

5. Goal 11. This goal is about making cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable. This also means access to safe and affordable housing which is becoming harder for younger generations across the world. So, working from home means that you can still have access to a good job, without having to live close to it.

6. Goal 12. This one is about ensuring sustainable consumption and production patterns. Businesses could save thousands of dollars from each of their employees that works from home, just from basic costs. But these savings could be higher if you include the higher productivity and work quality levels from more engaged and motivated employees.

7. Goal 13. The last goal here is about taking urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts. The connection here is clear to see as working from home reducing a heck of a lot of carbon emissions that come from the daily commute. Besides this, flexible workers can continue to work through natural events such as floods, snow storms and the like.