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Connecting and protecting
The pandemic has fundamentally changed methods of operating at INSEAD. Most of our people worked virtually for almost the entire academic year. Teleworking has proven to offer many benefits to the school and its staff. However, there are inevitable downsides, while the school has continued to focus on protecting the health and well-being of staff.
The cross-departmental Crisis Management Team has therefore remained in place and worked tirelessly throughout the year. At the same time, all departments were required to devise and implement an action plan based on various well-being and psychosocial risk surveys and analyses. In addition, special health information sessions ensured that staff in each of our locations were fully aware of the health insurance and well-being support available to them as employees of the school.
INSEAD learned a great deal about the well-being of employees during 2020/2021 and introduced several new measures. For example, the school now has a school-wide Agreement on Quality of Life at Work, with a focus on the “right to disconnect”, a commitment to more regular team meetings and more effective cascading of information from Management throughout the school.
Most important of all, over the last two years, we have learned that the sense of belonging to a unique global community is our key asset as an employer. Throughout 2020/2021, departments held not only regular e-meetings but also virtual social events. In addition, the Dean instituted monthly school-wide meetings attended, on average, by 577 staff.
Meanwhile, the Talent Development Team introduced monthly management “huddles”, or team leader sessions – with an average attendance of 70 per meeting – and a community of LinkedIn Learning Champions. One of our most successful experiments was the Mystery Virtual Coffees through which 250 colleagues met each other for the first time or got to know each other better.