The Evaluation of Importance of Safety Behaviors in a Steel Manufacturer by Entropy

Background: This study aimed to evaluate the workers safety behavior and to determine the impor-tance of each unsafe behavior in an Iranian steel manufacturing company. Methods: This study was conducted in Mobareke steel manufacturing company, which is located in the middle of Iran, in 2007. The methodology was based on the safety behavior sampling (SBS) tech-nique and entropy. After specifying the unsafe behaviors and with reference to the results of a pilot study a sample of 3248 was determined, with a sampling accuracy of 5% and confidence level of 95%. Results: The results indicated that 41.8% of workers behaviors were unsafe. The most frequent un-safe behaviors were inappropriate use of personal protective equipments (PPEs) with 32% of total un-safe behaviors. The results also notified a significant relationship between age, job experience and educa tional level on unsafe behaviors (P < 0.05). The highest weight, which is obtained by entropy, belongs to using inappropriate tools with weight of 0.1425. The ultimate findings of the study showed that a considerable number of workersʹ behaviors were unsafe, which is one of the main antecedents of in dustrial accidents. Conclusion: Considering catastrophic consequences of accidents in steel manufacturing industry, the results emphasize on diminishing unsafe behaviors and recommends applying behavior based safety principles.