Jamm was founded by former TokBox CTO Badri Rajasekar. TokBox was the first global CPaaS (Communication Platform as a Service) in 2010. Jamm is designed to encourage seamless collaboration for remote teams, utilizing both synchronous and asynchronous video and it is compatible with other popular workplace tools including Slack.
Digital Journal spoke with Badri Rajasekar to find out further details.
Digital Journal: How common is remote working becoming for workers?
Badri Rajasekar: Remote working is becoming increasingly common among knowledge workers. There has been a 44% increase in the amount of remote work (https://www.flexjobs.com/blog/post/flexjobs-gwa-report-remote-growth/) in the past 5 years and this number is on the increase due to global democratization of learning, large talent pools, technology enablers and companies recognizing the impact a flexible work policy can have towards hiring talent, and job satisfaction.
DJ: Why do employers promote home or remote working?
Rajasekar: Over half (53 percent) of U.S. respondents say that having a choice of work location is more important to them than working for a prestigious company. . Employers are quickly realizing the advantages remote work can have towards hiring and employee morale. A lot of knowledge working use-cases essentially show even increased productivity when people work remotely versus being physically co-located in a physical office.
DJ: How important is maintaining collaboration whilst working away from the office?
Rajasekar: In a survey conducted, remote workers reported: “Collaboration” and “Loneliness” as the top two problems that exist around remote work. The tools and processes are still not set up to enable a seamless collaborative work experience that allows people to be productive and not distracted. At the same time, fewer remote employees feel connected and plugged in. Traditional conferencing tools like Zoom can help, but formal and scheduled meetings are less useful in a remote/WFH scenario. Companies also suffer from an overload of unstructured text information that is fragmented across an ecosystem of internal tools like Slack, Jira, Notion, Google Docs, Office 365, Microsoft Teams, etc.
DJ: What is the Jamm solution?
Rajasekar:Jamm is a lightweight, spontaneous voice and video collaboration application for modern teams. As companies increasingly embrace work from home policies and remote teams, it becomes critical to be intentional about building a culture of trust and alignment. Organizations are just starting to realize how powerful video in the workplace can be. We don’t aspire to replace those traditional video conferencing experiences, we’re trying to create an entirely new one. Jamm enables rich, spontaneous interactions within the context of your work that more closely mimics how team members collaborate in real life. We want teams to feel more connected, have a space to hang out, share presence and be able to work across multiple time zones seamlessly.
DJ: How important is the addition of video over audio communication?
Rajasekar:There was a study recently that said 93% of communications is non-verbal. 93 percent, so text and words constitute only 7% of communication but yet we are all drowning in text at the workplace – slack, github, comments, trello, google docs, it’s just an overload of information. It’s way easier and more concise to just talk to someone than go back and forth in the comment threads. At Jamm, we have built a product that is lightweight and stays out of the way yet allows teams to communicate in a fluid, seamless and engaging way, so teams can collaborate quickly and be creative.
DJ: How does Jamm differ from your competitors?
Rajasekar:Most of our competitors only focus on live conversations or asynchronous messaging. We believe that this is a false dichotomy. Modern teams need to leverage the power of voice and video to express themselves as well as drive engagement and alignment within their teams. They also need the flexibility to jump into a huddle if necessary or send recorded status updates to their team – whatever best suits their workflow. So Jamm offers lightweight voice and video collaboration – group calling, recording, screen-sharing, white-boarding, shared pointers, and more – all in a single app and click. Jamm makes it easy to:
Feel connected with your team without being “always-on”. Loneliness is a real issue with remote work.
Communicate across time zones with video stories or video podcasts.
Quickly huddle, brainstorm, and whiteboard ideas.
Enable casual hallway conversations and hangouts.
Discover conversations with an enhanced presence.
Enhance existing workflows like Slack.
Bond socially and just have fun!
