Forget Your Age
When Hamnah started working for Aviva 12 years ago, her role involved a lot of repetitive paperwork. As an Administrative Officer in New Business Issuance, she would receive daily piles of policy documents that needed to be manually processed.
Her role started to change as the company – and industry – gradually went digital.
“With a change in business processes from data entry to data verification, my role underwent transformation, and since 2013 I saw a gradual expansion in my scope of work,” Hamnah explained. “There’s a lot of changes in our internal processes, a lot of automation going on as well.”
As she began taking on more client calls and troubleshooting duties, Hamnah recognised that she needed new skills. Driven to excel at her job, she took the initiative to enrol in a part-time diploma course in 2018.
Hamnah’s decision to take on a diploma course didn’t come easy, either. Pursuing a diploma at her age was no piece of cake. It was tiring, and her weekends were eaten up by classes and assignments.
However, she was undaunted.
“At first I was reluctant to go for the course, because it meant that my weekends will be burnt up,” she admitted. “But then when I went for the first day, the lecturer motivated me and then I really wanted to continue. And with monetary support from my SkillsFuture credit, I completed the course.”
Thanks to her supportive children and classmates who were older than her, Hamnah was able to stay motivated to complete her course.
“It really inspired me. If an older person can still go down and sit in class every weekend, why not me?”
In turn, she hopes to pay it forward and inspire those older than her as well as those younger to take on new challenges and learn new skills. Most of all, she wants to be a role model for her children and the new hires in her department.