When the COVID-19 pandemic struck more than two years ago, none of us could say with any conviction that we knew what to expect.
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Indeed, in those early days we barely had a trace of this virus beyond our shores.
But 2020 quickly changed, with one of the most significant and worrying events being the breakout in Melbourne.
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Aged care homes were hit especially hard, with hundreds-upon-hundreds of deaths, and before long NSW was enforcing a hard closure of the border with Victoria.
This is where the economic and social cost began to bite with a vengeance as the Border community was split in two.
Many businesses could not operate as normal, forcing some to shut permanently, and the everyday normalities of shopping, school runs and dining out became a nightmare.
We didn't know how many people in our community would get this frightening illness, and how many might lose their lives.
Aside from limited mask-wearing requirements and ongoing reminders about social distancing and getting a booster jab, much of that unusual time has quickly disappeared into the past.
And yet in so many ways the spectre of COVID-19 continues to impact on our daily lives in many ways.
Working from home continues to be a way of life for many, creating a new phenomenon that Charles Sturt University senior lecturer Dr Stacey Jenkins has addressed under the "hybrid workplace" headline.
This whole new way of working, she has found, has created an environment radically different from the past.
While many people have loved doing their job from home, on the flip-side has been the loss of some of the team-work so vital for many organisations.
If you can't get together with your colleagues regularly, the theory goes, the benefits of such collaboration can easily be lost for your employer.
Clearly the work-life balance has changed. In turn, there has been the creation of an expectation amongst workers of wanting to maintain such flexibility in the long-term.
The challenge for many Border employers will be adapting their practices so they can embrace and therefore reap the benefit from such change.
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