INSEAD Reviews

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.

If you work on Singapore campus expect to have to cover for your French colleagues who are on sick leave or "sabbatical" half of the year at least. Also they like to go on 4-5 week holidays in the summer and dump their work on you before they leave. You will also work Christmas while the French enjoy another mandatory holiday. You will be told that INSEAD is a "Business School for the World" but all promotions will go to the French, meetings will take place in French, and you will work 80 hours a week because the precious French need their work-life balance. Your team will be punished and dismissed while your French manager goes on sick leave for 5 years and comes back to a pay rise.