About Unjam

Workplace conflict, handled early.

Every dispute has a moment when it could still have gone the other way. Unjam is there for that moment. It reads the message you’re about to send, tells you how it could land, and offers a version you’ll be glad you sent. Two minutes to set up, and nothing you write is kept.

Where it came from

Unjam grew out of Mediator Academy, which we started in 2014 to teach people to resolve conflict, using technology to scale education: first through universities, then by training thousands of managers to handle difficult conversations themselves.

We kept meeting the same thing. By the time a conflict reached us, positions had hardened and parties had become entrenched. The damage was done months, sometimes years, earlier, in a moment nobody called a conflict at the time: a reply fired off in frustration, a difficult message avoided until it festered, an opinion buried in caveats that led to misunderstandings. Every dispute we ever saw had started somewhere, and nobody had been watching.

So we went to where it starts. Unjam is thirty years of dealing with conflict, turned into something that reaches a manager at the moment it matters, in the message still sitting in drafts.

How it fits together

Conflict has a life. It starts small, it gets managed or it doesn’t, and some of it ends up in a formal process. We work along the whole of it, with one method.

Unjam handles the start: the moment before anyone calls it a conflict. Our training helps managers handle what’s already under way. And when something does reach a formal stage, our mediators handle that too. Same people, same method, from the first message to the mediation room. Most of what we try to do is get to the issues early, because that’s where it costs least to get right.

What we believe

Sooner is cheaper. A conflict costs more every week it’s left: a conversation, then a process, then a tribunal. The earliest moment is the cheapest one, and until now nobody could reach it.

Assume the best of people. Almost everyone who writes a hard email is trying to do something reasonable. What goes wrong is usually how it was said, not who said it. Unjam never tells you off; it shows you what your words are doing and leaves the choice with you.

Never who, never the words. Nothing you write is kept. Your employer never sees what you wrote. An organisation can see how often and where, never who and never what. That is how it’s built, not a line in a policy.

Who we are

Unjam is built by the founders of Mediator Academy, mediators, consultants and trainers who have spent their careers helping people through conflict, and who got increasingly frustrated at arriving after the damage was done.

Get in touch

Questions, or Unjam for your organisation? hello@unjam.com.

Unjam is a product of Glyndwr Media Limited, registered in England & Wales (company no. 08764217).