Honeywell, the world’s largest PPE company with annual sales of $2 billion, held a press conference Monday morning to explain how it was repositioning itself as not only a PPE manufacturer, but a source of training and consulting for safety pros.

“We talked to hundreds of professionals around the world and we kept hearing the same thing,” said Christophe Mathy, VP of communications and branding for Honeywell. “I love my job but I’m totally overwhelmed.”

Many pros need as much help as they can get, said Mathy. Think of the workload: reg compliance, training and education, audits, investigations, recordkeeping, goal-setting, empowering and engaging the workforce, handling comp claims, monitoring and collecting exposure data and other types of information. And now more pros are taking on sustainability reporting responsibilities.

No wonder at a session held Monday morning, consultant Corrie Pitzer told his audience of several hundred that one of the traps of safety is “reductionism.” This is the tendency to find a single, simple explanation for an error or an accident, which usually ends up being human error, with the remedy being re-training and/or discipline.

When you’re overloaded, it’s tempting to take the path of least resistance.