How to head off the health risks that come with remote work: the case for wellness at home

Remote work, which spread through the pandemic, is still in place at many companies in 2025. Less time commuting, flexible working and better work-life balance have brought staff a great deal.

At the same time, health risks have surfaced. The activity and daily rhythm that office work provided naturally fall apart easily at home. Supporting the health of people working from home is no longer something to leave to the individual; it is a matter for the organisation.

Common health problems among people working from home

These health problems are widely reported among people working remotely.

• Weight gain and lifestyle disease risk from too little movement: with no commute, daily step counts fall sharply. More snacking and irregular meals on top of that visibly raise the risk of obesity and high blood pressure.
• Fatigue building up through long hours: at home the line between work and everything else blurs, and people carry on late into the evening. That leads to chronic tiredness and too little sleep.
• Eating badly: people lean more on convenience stores and delivery, and the balance of what they eat tends to slip. Too little fruit and vegetables in particular makes it easy to lose concentration and resilience.
• Mental health trouble: loneliness, the blurred line between on and off, and the load of housework and childcare alongside work all become sources of stress that tell on mind and body.

Left alone, these feed straight into business risks: lower productivity, higher medical costs and higher turnover.

Seven eating habits for staying healthy while working remotely, and the traps to avoid

Why wellness at home is needed

Workplace wellness has spread widely, helped by the Health and Productivity Management Organization certification scheme run by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. Until now, though, it centred on work that assumed people came to the office, such as health checks and improving the office environment.

What is needed now is wellness at home, built for remote working. When most staff work from home, health gaps widen unless the company actively provides the structure.

Wellness at home is not a benefit but an investment in the organisation lasting. Healthy staff concentrate better, and productivity and engagement rise with it. In the end it strengthens the company's brand and its hiring power too.

What companies should do about the health of people working from home

So how does a company actually practise wellness at home? Here are the main approaches.

1. Supporting daily rhythm

• Introduce check-in and check-out at the start and end of the day to prevent long hours
• Use calendars and apps to make meal and break times visible
• Provide something that builds a regular daily rhythm into a habit

2. Online health content

• Online seminars from registered dietitians, on things like balanced meals that are quick to make
• Stretching videos to head off stiff shoulders and back pain
• Self-check programmes for mental care

3. Support around food and nutrition

• Meal support such as delivered lunches, vegetable boxes or health foods
• Handing out dried vegetables and vegetable powders that keep at room temperature, easy to use at home
• Online recipe-sharing sessions for staff

4. Stronger communication

• Regular one-to-ones to ease isolation
• Online lunches and an internal chat about health, so people can talk easily

5. Mental health measures

• Putting online counselling in place
• Running stress checks regularly, so things are caught and dealt with early
• Building an environment where it is easy to speak up from home

Bringing Yasai Yakuzen into health support for people working from home

Much of what rises with working from home, from lost concentration and afternoon drowsiness to feeling the cold, stiff shoulders and low mood, is closely tied to eating and to constitution slipping out of balance. This is where the thinking behind Yasai Yakuzen helps. Choosing everyday vegetables to suit your constitution, rather than special kampo ingredients, gives staff something they can keep up without strain.

Here are examples of Yasai Yakuzen measures a company can introduce.

• Offering the Yasai Yakuzen constitution check: give staff an easy way to check their constitution on a phone, so they can see which ingredients and which direction of eating suit them.
• Chat with a yakuzen practitioner: put in place a way to message registered dietitians and yakuzen specialists, answering the everyday questions about food and how people feel that come with working from home.
• E-learning videos: short videos of five to ten minutes covering ways to eat better that work at home, and how to use vegetables by constitution.

Building Yasai Yakuzen in this way lets staff feel their eating improve to suit them without leaving home, and strengthens the company's wellness work.

A step towards Health and Productivity Management certification

This work does more than protect staff health. It becomes an important part of outside assessment, including the national Health and Productivity Management Organization certification and local authority wellness awards. Health measures for remote working in particular are an area many companies have yet to address properly, so putting them in place early is a field where you are readily regarded as ahead of the curve.

The certification criteria include measures for improving staff health, tackling lifestyle disease and mental health. Add distinctive measures such as food support for people working from home, or self-care built on an online constitution check and Yasai Yakuzen, and you not only score better but feed straight into staff satisfaction.

Wellness work also says a good deal outwardly, and helps with recruiting and with the company brand. In recent years shareholders and investors have come to see a company that values its people as one that can keep growing, and interest is rising from an ESG investment point of view. Workplace wellness, in other words, is not part of employee benefits but a management measure to build into your growth strategy.

In summary: workplace wellness evolves by covering the home

Remote work will stay an essential way of working. Within it, how a company protects and supports staff health has become one of the central questions of management strategy. Rather than leaving health problems from working at home to the individual, putting a structure in place as wellness at home not only keeps staff well but raises productivity, keeps people longer and improves how the company is seen.

Build in thinking that settles how you feel through everyday meals without strain, as Yasai Yakuzen does, and each member of staff becomes aware of their own constitution and state and acts on their health under their own steam. That, accumulated, feeds straight into performance across the organisation.

Now is the time for companies to picture what workplace wellness looks like in the era of working from home, and to put something concrete in place. Sustainable growth built on health is what will carry competitiveness in the next generation.