Elmi Ezzaty: Committed to Healthcare in Every Possible Way

ASW is filled with talented and interesting people. We had a chat with one of them, Elmi Ezzaty from our Kuala Lumpur office, to talk about her new life at ASW, and what it was like to transition from doctor to corporate achiever.

Hi Elmi! Tell us about yourself.

Hi, my name is Elmi Ezzaty but most people call me El. I’m 28 years old, and a holder of an MBBS degree (Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery). Currently, I’m staying in Rawang, Malaysia with my parents and my adorable two-year-old son. I have been with ASW for a year and I’m currently working with a health services provider as my client.

So El, what do you do at your job as ASW?

I’m the Assistant Team Leader for a team of rehabilitation assistants both here in Kuala Lumpur, and Manila, Philippines. My client is responsible for assisting injured workers to return to work. We focus on the administrative duties and assisting the consultants based in Australia with their requests. These range from preparing reports or documents, liaising with healthcare providers for appointments or medical documents retrieval, to conducting online research for various purposes, such as finding retraining courses, and sending online assessments, to name a few.

You were previously a doctor who chose to explore the corporate world. How did you arrive at that decision?

Well, to be completely honest, the main concern I had while I was a doctor was the lack of work-life balance. I used to work for more than 100 hours per week, sometimes even working for seven days straight when the hospital was short-staffed.

But the biggest turning point was after I gave birth to my son. I was too fixated on my job to a point where he didn’t recognise me as his mother. This was when I started to reevaluate my life and what truly mattered to me as a single mother.

I then quit the hospital and started looking for corporate jobs that offered work-life balance. I made sure to discuss the company’s work culture during the interviews. I focused on finding a role within the healthcare industry because helping people is still one of my life goals, even if I can’t be a frontliner. I consider myself very fortunate to have come across the job here in ASW. And when I was offered the role, I knew that this was what I wanted, and accepting the offer was the best decision I’ve made.

What’s your day-to-day like?

As an Assistant Team Leader, my daily tasks mainly involve triaging all incoming requests, and distributing them amongst our team of ten rehabilitation assistants. I make sure tasks are completed within an acceptable timeframe and that urgent tasks are being attended to.

I also train new hires to ensure they are well-equipped to perform their duties. I assist my team members when they are having difficulties in completing or solving out of the ordinary requests. Apart from all these, it’s mainly ensuring that our team meets the KPI requirements, performing quality checks on our outputs, and providing reports and insights to my superiors for further improvement.

What can you say about the healthcare industry that you work in?

It truly is a new and interesting experience for me. What we deal with in our work, that service offered is not available in Malaysia yet, as far as I’m concerned. Having worked in Malaysia’s healthcare industry and now working in Australian healthcare, I can’t help but compare both. The Australian healthcare system is much more organized and inclusive as compared to what we have in Malaysia. And I wish for the day when we’re able to mirror that capability here, or perhaps have more advanced healthcare services so we could offer a similarly comprehensive service to Malaysians.

How was it adapting your skills to meet Australian business standards or Australian client requirements?

Honestly it wasn’t much of a challenge for me. I believe that everyone has their own skillsets that are applicable and valuable to any company anywhere in the world. I honestly believe it doesn’t matter which company we’re working for – as long as we’re giving our 110%, we should be able to meet any client’s requirements.

What are the usual challenges of being a Team Leader?

I think the biggest challenge I have is to ensure that we’re attending to all of our tasks within the expected turnaround time and the average handling time, without burning out my team members. This is especially challenging during the second half of the month, as everyone’s trying to complete their end-of-month obligations. We would notice an exponential increase in incoming task requests from the consultants. And since we’re now catering to the whole of Australia, the volume of incoming tasks can be quite demanding.

So you’ve been with ASW since 2019. What’s your favourite memory in ASW so far?

It’s only been a year that I’ve been with ASW, and most of it has been working from home. I was looking forward to the company trip, but because of COVID-19, it’s been postponed indefinitely. So I’d say the best memory I’ve had would be the annual dinner we had in November 2019. I won the best-dressed award for that night! When I was working as a doctor, dressed mostly in scrubs and coats, we didn’t have events like that. I really felt appreciated as an employee, and I had a lot of fun.

How do you make sure to become better at your job after all these years?

I’m quite a perfectionist and I love to question everything. I guess it has to do with my doctor training, where we were always encouraged to be inquisitive, and hungry for more information so we could understand and execute better. These traits, I think, have translated well into my current job, where I’d always strive to understand the reason behind everything we do. This approach makes me better at my job and I’m proud to say that I’ve gained the trust of my client. And, thankfully, they see that I’m good at what I’m doing that they promoted me to Assistant Team Leader just six months after I got onboard.

What would you like to be doing five years from now?

I’d love to see myself stepping up the corporate ladder – probably be good enough to rival Chee Weng as the Account Manager? I’m kidding! But honestly, ASW values their employees and I’d definitely strive to prove myself even more as a worthy member of the company, so they can confidently entrust me with bigger responsibilities in the future.