Behavior-Based Safety (BBS) processes are helping us work together across our North America Business to keep people safe and operate responsibly. These employees from Bartow and others at our operations sites are trained to conduct peer-to-peer safety observations. The goal? Working together to identify and address potential risks.  

“The goal of Behavior-Based Safety (BBS) is to identify at-risk behaviors and replace them with safe behaviors,” explains Trent Hagerman, BBS Lead. “Many of the BBS processes currently in place in our North America Business use peer-to-peer observations to help us identify, recognize and share safe behaviors. It’s a partnership between our employees and management – we want to find safer solutions and further develop a culture where we’re all comfortable talking about safety.”   

BBS has been a focus at our North America operations facilities for years, and a formal program was established for our North America Business in 2021 to help sites evolve current BBS processes and act as a roadmap for sites implementing new processes. BBS is also a focus of for our North America Business in 2022.   

“Our goal in 2022 is to have a strong BBS process in place at all our North America Business operations sites,” explains Trent. “Sites without processes are working on putting one in place, and we’re improving existing processes by sharing and implementing best practices from across Mosaic and our industry.”    


Great progress was made with BBS programs across our North America Business, including at our Bartow and South Fort Meade facilities in Florida: 

  • Bartow: Through their BARTOW (Bartow Assesses Risk Through Observing Workforce) BBS process, the Bartow team met their target to complete 100 safety observations a month – setting a record in April with 250. They identified and provided coaching on 75 potential at-risk exposures, many involving hand safety and pinch points. In 2021, they also expanded the process to South Pierce and provided training on digital data entry to help the Carlsbad, Belle Plaine, South Fort Meade and South Pierce teams transition from using paper copies and outdated software to a more user-friendly digital platform.   
  • South Fort Meade: The South Fort Meade team in Florida implemented the ACT (Assess, Communicate, Teach) BBS process in 2021 with a goal of training seven observers, doing quality observations, creating buy-in at the site and improving the safety culture. They accomplished these goals and completed a total of 515 peer-to-peer observations. These observations identified safe behaviors and great work being done, as well as some potential at-risk behaviors that were discussed to find safer solutions. The observations also identified several potential at-risk conditions that were repaired or improved by site management.