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 importance 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) technique 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 unsafe behaviors were inappropriate use of personal protective equipments (PPEs) with 32% of total unsafe behaviors. The results also notified a significant relationship between age, job experience and educational 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 workers' behaviors were unsafe, which is one of the main antecedents of industrial 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.