This study was conducted to examine how health counselling via electronic mail (e‐mail health counselling) was used in the workplace. The definition of health counselling employed in this study was ‘any assistance to an individual seeking to solve any health problem’. A total of 2119 health counsellings conducted at a Japanese company's head office (700 employees) in 1997 and 1998 was used for the analysis, which compared four health counselling methods: e‐mail, face‐to‐face, telephone and ordinary mail. This study distinguished four main characteristics of e‐mail health counselling. First, the most and second most frequently used counselling methods were face‐to‐face and telephone counselling, at 70 and 15%, respectively, with e‐mail health counselling ranked third at 13%. e‐mail counselling was the second most frequently used method for employees in their 20s and 30s, while it ranked third among those over 40. Only 6% of employees in their 50s used e‐mail counselling. Secondly, the proportion of mental health issues treated via e‐mail counselling was significantly higher, at 26%, than for other counselling methods, which was at or below 10% for each of the other methods. Thirty‐two per cent of all mental health counselling was conducted via e‐mail. Thirdly, compared with face‐to‐face counselling, e‐mail counselling dealt with more health issues related to primary prevention than with those related to secondary or tertiary prevention. Fourthly, compared with face‐to‐face counselling, e‐mail counselling dealt more with health issues of third parties. These results suggest that e‐mail health counselling may be useful in reaching people other than those targeted by the remaining counselling methods.