If you are a small business looking to make big changes to the health and wellbeing of yourself and your staff, utilising your smartphone and some of the smarter startup tech products out there could be the answer. Keeping staff motivated and productive can often come down to allowing them to embrace healthy lifestyles both in the office and at home. There are many health and wellbeing apps available with that cause in mind, and here we discuss a few of them that can help keep bodies healthy and minds active so you can build your small business into exactly what you want it to be.

Physiotherapy

Corporate physiotherapy is an important part of ensuring employees reach their maximum potential. Many physical ailments and muscle problems could be the result of a poorly maintained office and lack of ergonomics knowledge (fitting the job to the worker). So many things can affect the physicality of workers, from having a chair and desk at the wrong height to the discomfort of uniforms or dress codes.

The iRehab.com app, priced at $9.99 is one of the most popular and has received good reviews from users and professional physiotherapists alike – in fact, we have two to share, one is available here.

With an easy-to-use interface and good for therapeutic intervention, this app is great for use by workers who may suffer from any form of back pain. After a brief questionnaire, the app completes an exercise regime which can be done at home or perhaps on a lunch break. The exercises are demonstrated by a 3D animated model showing users how to do them properly in order to not cause more damage to the back.

Corporate physiotherapists also recommend this app because of its simplicity and ability to be used both at work and at home. Alex Bell from backinactionuk.com tested iRehab and said, “This app is great for people suffering from mild back pain at work. The look of it is simple and easy-to-use, however the exercises are in-depth and allow for progression making it an all-round success for those who want to gain more flexibility and lessen everyday pain in the back.”

Concentration

We all know how difficult in can be to keep concentration up at work. Whether you work in an office or a shop, you are usually no more than a few clicks away from an entire realm of social distraction. There has long been a problem with staff checking their social media sites during work hours which can lead to another site and then another site until an hour has gone past and the most you have to show for it is a not-so-funny picture of a cat in a waistcoat…

With Anti-Social.cc the problem is blocked completely and quite literally. This program is available for computers as a stand alone application and works by blocking all social media sites completely for a set amount of time determined by the worker. For a cost of $15 the user can choose from up to 30 social networking sites to block, including Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Reddit, and they can be blocked from between 15 minutes and eight hours! There is absolutely no way to unblock the sites (the program creators say this is “keeping you honest”) unless the computer or smartphone is completely rebooted. This stops workers from having the day to day distractions that can waste so much time and allows them instead, to improve concentration by giving staff no other option than to work!

Motivation

Once staff have worked on their concentration, it is time to make sure they have the motivation at work to their full potential. Small businesses often have less money to spend on employee engagement techniques such as staff parties, salary incentives for improved work or the potential for flexible working to increase intrinsic motivation.

If money is tight therefore, there are apps available for staff to use in order to reach both their work and personal goals. Coach.me is a free app designed to help motivate people in all aspects of life, from being better at work to losing weight. The app works by getting users to input personal goals and offering many levels of motivation including day to day advice, community motivation in the form of cheers and the recording of each milestone you complete. There is also the option to request a personal coach from one of the app’s long list of professional helpers, and Coach.me will helpfully prompt users to keep on trying and not let them forget the important goals they have set themselves.

This app is great for small businesses as staff can set the same work-based goals and pull together to ensure they are achieved, additionally should you work alone, the app can help you push forward with those lower priority goals that are just too easy to palm off.

Human Resources

Another issue that some small businesses face, particularly those with just a few staff members, is the lack of a dedicated human resources department. Although the team may be small, managing staff requests such as holiday or sickness and individual project deadlines can be tough. There are many apps to help with HR needs, but Lemigo HR is one of the most comprehensive and user-friendly apps available…or will be when it’s in the app store! It’s currently in beta and you can get it now by registering on the site.

The app allows for so many aspects of running a team of workers, including holiday, employee and project management, as well as recording shift patterns and rotas and salary tracking. It also charts statistics about various aspects of the business letting bosses know areas that need improving as well as worker trends. With detailed information served to managers in a simple design, it is the perfect app for emerging businesses, giving them the same tools as larger corporations who have HR departments. This means a small business can offer big things for less money, which can then be put in to other areas of the business.

We all know there is an app or digital solution for pretty much everything these days, but they do not all have to be social. With the aforementioned apps, whole teams of workers can enjoy the daily grind more. They can be comfortable in a physical sense, reducing any pain and discomfort, but also in a mental sense. Using these apps can offer small businesses the chance to maintain excellent standards of work while allowing attention to be given to other areas, inciting growth and development of both the company and those who work for it.

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