Six trips around the Nintex sun, sparked by a broken laptop

Amira Razali has spent six years growing her career with Nintex, from a contract employee to a senior license management team lead for Europe, Middle East, and Africa. Read on for how she got through a tough time with her mental health and a strenuous workload, and what she now appreciates and takes advantage as she leans into the trust, flexibility, and opportunity that are part of Nintex’s challenging, fast-paced environment.

People are drawn to new jobs for all sorts of reasons.

And when Amira found Nintex, it was because she needed a laptop!

A science teacher at the time, Amira didn’t have the funds to support the purchase of a laptop. She decided, “It’s time for a new job,” and began her search.

While cruising JobStreet, Amira discovered an open role at Nintex. Laughing at the silliness of it all now, she shares, “I saw ‘laptop’ and applied right away. I’m not sure I even read the whole job profile.”

She received a phone call she didn’t expect.

“Hi, we saw your application. Any chance you know anything about Salesforce?”

With only a touch of tech experience in her teaching post, and minimal systems experience in a prior customer service position she’d held, Amira shared with the recruiter that she wasn’t Salesforce-savvy. The recruiter pressed on, “Do a bit of research on Salesforce and see if it’s something you might be interested in.”

After digging deeper and growing increasingly interested in the job, Amira got serious and two interviews later, received news the role was hers. She drafted her school resignation that very day.

The Nintex post kicked off as a three-person, Kuala Lumpur office-based team. After a brief initial training period, covering Salesforce administration and sales coordination, the team rotated shifts monthly to accommodate Nintex’s three major global time zones. It was rough on them personally to shift schedules so often.

After a few months, the team switched to permanent shifts to better accommodate daily routines at home and help develop closer relationships with their extended Nintex team members. Amira eagerly aligned to Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA).

“Being in Malaysia, I may have been an outsider geographically, but I never felt that way within the EMEA team. They took me on as a sales coordinator and really trained me how to do the whole job, not just the essential licensing function.”

Almost three years in and a contract renewal later, Amira received an offer for a permanent post.

“I have to be honest that I had doubts initially,” she shares. “At the beginning, I didn’t know what I was getting into,” she said. “I mean, the reason I applied for Nintex was the laptop after all!”

And to say she was feeling quite stressed with her workload at the time is an understatement.

Working from home, followed by COVID lockdowns kicking in, she shares “My mental health was so low at one point I was honestly telling my laptop, ‘Because of you, I’m stuck!’ I was going crazy. It’s because I was ignoring the balance I needed to stay healthy.”

Classifying herself as a workaholic during that period of her life, Amira noticed a drastic change in her personality and motivation. “I was quite the chatterbox before that time in my life, but all this time alone in the house made me prefer being alone. I didn’t see people, I started spending less time with my family, I’d sleep almost the whole weekend. My shift was tiring and my mental health suffered. I knew I didn’t want that anymore.”

With the offer of a permanent post, Amira would receive a role expansion and gain new team members. Her role rebalanced.

“When I took on a team, I decided that whatever happens, my motto will always be ‘You must balance work with your life – and put life first’.”

Supporting the EMEA region, Amira’s team has some unusual working hours. “We start at 4pm and settle into the workday with a bit of coffee. Many of us take an early break to have dinner with our families or go for a walk. We usually clock off around 1am. The shift can be challenging, so integrating important moments of your day-to-day life, into work, is critical.”

Amira makes sure her team’s not making the same early career mistakes with work-life integration that she did. “From time-to-time, when we have a less challenging workload, I encourage my team to log off early and will also model that behavior.”

Amira now makes it a point to see friends on the weekend and have weekday dinners more regularly with her family. It’s often the only part of the day during which they can spend time together given everyone except Amira works regular shifts.

“If you stay online for nine hours straight, you’ll not only lose productivity. You’ll lose your quality of life and in my case, a piece of your sanity too.”

Amira describes Nintex as a fast-paced company where everything keeps changing, adding that it has grown and transformed even more rapidly since Covid.

“Change here is so fast and it can be challenging to keep up. We’re constantly learning new products and have to work even more quickly to accommodate these changes.”

But there’s a bigger picture.

“At Nintex, it’s an environment that ensures we adapt quickly. The growth I’ve experienced in my personality, how I work, my adaptability and my product knowledge is incredible given where I started.”

Looking back, Amira has always wanted a challenge, wanted to grow. She stays at Nintex because she continues to experience that. “Nintex as a fast-moving workplace enables so much growth.”

And the benefits of a challenging pace are no fewer for Amira’s team.

“My team has a lot of learning opportunities driven by the constant changes. They’ve developed incredible analytical skills and are agile with what they’ve learned product-to-product as they work to understand the market and customer needs. I’m seeing great progress in them from a career standpoint, because the skills they’re growing provide a lot of opportunity to move throughout the business, here or elsewhere. We learn a lot, gain a lot, and that’s what I appreciate about working at Nintex.”

And while the opportunity to grow in her ability to adapt and learn quickly has been a major part of Amira’s desire to stick around Nintex, there’s something else she values.

After a struggle with finding her footing integrating life and work in her early years, and her mental health suffering, Amira now leans into the flexibility Nintex offers.

“Management trusts us – it’s a hallmark of our culture. Employees aren’t pushed on nine hours of productivity each day. There’s a give-and-get in how, where and to some extent, when we work. It helps us form great habits that work for us as individuals with lives and relationships that matter outside of those laptop screens.”

In fact, Amira’s currently adding to her team and is intentionally looking to work with someone that can appreciate the trusting and agile environment offered here. “My friends at other companies don’t have the flexibility I have. In Malaysia, this organizational quality is unique. We’re not nitpicked. We’re not over-managed.”

Amira’s realized now that her mental health can take precedence over her work without sacrificing professional goals and growth. “What I have right now is the best. My role, my team, my life and my health. And I know what we do makes an important difference for Nintex and our customers.”

“By the way, I bought that laptop!”

 

 

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