companies offer their allergic employees the opportunity to go to an island during pollen season

More and more Japanese companies are complaining about the impact of allergies on their productivity. So, in order not to lose efficiency in the spring, they are starting to offer their allergic employees relocations to paradise islands, far from pollen.

No more itchy eyes, stuffy noses and shortness of breath. During the hay fever season, you will be able to settle in islands with turquoise waters and white sand, in the very south of Japan, in the Okinawa archipelago. On site, the vegetation is completely different. You are in the middle of the East China Sea. There are therefore no birches, cedars or cypresses which are very allergenic, itThere are more coconut and palm trees. And this is where Japanese companies install their employees who suffer from allergies for several weeks.

One of the pioneers of this policy is an IT start-up, the Aisaac group. It has implemented this strategy since 2022. The founder of the company is himself very ill during this season and he believes that the teams lose too much efficiency when they are bothered by this hay fever. In Japan, we call it “kafunsho”. Four out of ten people in Japan say they are concerned. And these are allergies that last from February to May during the flowering of the trees that we find almost everywhere in the cities. These are mainly cedars and cypresses which were replanted en masse after the destruction of the Second World War.

Aid of 1,200 euros for employees with allergies

In the case of the Aisaac company, each employee who wants to go to work in the spring in an allergy-free zone receives an allowance to pay for their travel, on-site accommodation and a space to work. Basically, everyone can receive, in addition to their normal salary, aid of 1,200 euros. In 2023, a third of Aisaac employees will have used this program which has also been named internally “escape to the Tropics”. It is currently estimated that nearly one in five Japanese companies offer their allergic employees the opportunity to telework during the hay fever period to avoid spending too much time outside where there are more pollens.

Many workers now also have allowances to pay for medications such as antihistamines, special masks or eye drops. Each time, the idea is really to allow employees to get through this period as best as possible and to remain efficient at work. A professor at the Fukuoka National Hospital calculated that Japan lost nearly 5,000 billion yen, or 30 billion euros, in productivity each year due to these allergies.