Pros
Despite the 1-star review, there are however several good benefits at INSEAD. - Excellent medical insurance coverage - Work/life balance (especially if you are based in France which takes work/life balance to the extreme) - Mostly friendly colleagues - Very nice work environment with coffee shop, gym and fun events - Holiday allowance and WFH policy - If you're based in France you can basically go on sick leave, sabbatical leave, burnout leave, whatever, for as long as you like with no consequences
Cons
Unfortunately the structure of INSEAD leads to certain institutional problems that at this stage have become detrimental to the operations of the school. Top leadership in the school is drawn upon from Faculty who generally have little real-world experience and actual people or business skills. This applies also to the Dean. Another institutional problem is that every 5 or 10 years there is a change of Dean and during that transitional period there is a vacuum of power at the top. 2023 is such a transition year and the current Dean mentally checked out of making any difficult decisions at least 18 months ago. A new Dean is incoming but by the time he is settled in it will mean that INSEAD has had about 2 years with an indifferent leader who was just focused on his exit. Sadly, this lack of leadership has filtered down to the next level and allowed all kinds of toxicity to develop. Upper-management engage in a Game of Thrones style battle between themselves as they vie to position themselves for the next Dean, dragging their departments with them into their political battles. Most toxic of all is the HR department that has been allowed to grow like a cancer within the school, negatively influencing everything it touches. Read the Glassdoor reviews (select for both English and French) and you'll see that most complaints are towards HR - ignore the repetitive 5-star reviews which bear all the hallmarks (short incomplete sentences, bad spelling, lazy copying/pasting) of being written by the guy who leads HR. There are serious questions about the leadership of HR that need to be addressed. Turnover is huge and it's leadership team is inexperienced and unrespected with a tenure measured in months rather than years. Serious ethical issues surround the guy leading HR and his herd. Harassment complaints are swept away, retaliation is guaranteed despite reassurances, there are questionable expensive training schemes signed off that have personal links to HR leadership, ditto for recruitment, and the narcissistic yet incompetent Chief People Officer regularly loses his temper in group meetings without consequence. An organization should not suffer because one person has unresolved mummy issues. During my time at INSEAD I witnessed shocking abuses of power and the subsequent cover ups. Blame for this can only be pointed towards the Dean whose indifference has allowed toxic monsters in upper management to reign unchecked. For a school that preaches itself as being a "force for good" I saw people fired for the crime of being harassed, HR staff given salaries and pay increases that went outside normal process and were denied to other departments (even when Singapore staff were forced to take an 8% paycut during COVID), and seriously questionable decisions on how money was spent. I left INSEAD entirely cynical of non-profits and related NGOs and would recommend to anyone with an appreciation of competence to seek employment elsewhere.
