Jessica Hessels

Jessica Hessels is Manager of Customer Onboarding at Bucketlist Rewards, an employee rewards and recognition platform based in Vancouver, British Columbia. She works directly with new customers to get recognition programs up and running, then to keep them delivering value as programs mature.

Making Sure Leadership Messages Actually Reach Every Level

Jessica has spoken publicly on what she calls the "communication cascade": the gap between what leadership intends to communicate and what actually reaches frontline employees, and how organizations can build a repeatable toolkit (a "people leader messaging toolkit") so key messages don't get diluted or lost as they move down through management layers. She regularly presents Bucketlist's own research on recognition trends at the company's Recognition Week and Elevate Extraordinary conferences, covering how to align recognition programs with business goals and drive the right behaviors rather than just generic praise. Her work sits at the intersection of onboarding design and recognition strategy: helping new customers set programs up in a way that's more likely to stick past the initial rollout.

Topics Jessica speaks on

• The "communication cascade": getting leadership messages to every level
• Onboarding recognition programs so they actually get adopted
• Aligning recognition with business goals and desired behaviors
• Recognition trends shaping employee engagement in 2025 and beyond
• Building people leader messaging toolkits

Connect

• Jessica Hessels on LinkedIn
• Bucketlist Rewards

Want more on what it takes to make sure recognition programs actually get adopted, not just launched? Learn more about the Achieve Leadership Network.