Being Human at Work: The Whole Person Behind the Job

In this episode of Inside Out: Mental Health at Work and in Life, I'm joined by Nicky McLaughlin, Area Partnership Manager for Scotland at CAP (Christians Against Poverty), a debt counselling charity now in its 30th year.

Nicky supports the debt centre managers and coaches who visit people in their own homes, often at the hardest points of their lives. That means holding two things at once: the toll that debt and crisis take on clients, and the toll that supporting them takes on staff. We talk about what a genuinely healthy workplace looks like when your team spends its days absorbing other people's distress.

At the heart of the conversation is an idea Nicky keeps returning to: people are whole people. You don't leave your grief, your money worries or your home life at the door when you clock in. Nicky is honest about his own history, giving up a job years ago to stress and anxiety, learning that it was okay to say he wasn't okay at work, and why sharing doesn't have to be all or nothing. It's a warm, practical conversation about care, boundaries, and building a culture where nobody has to pretend they have it all together.

🔑 Key Topics

• Why the people drawn to caring work so often carry their own experiences, and what that means for supporting them
• The whole person at work: why splitting your work self from your home self doesn't hold
• Sharing without oversharing: telling what you need to tell, and why it isn't all or nothing
• Modelling vulnerability as a manager, and why going first changes the culture
• The risk of assuming the one person who did the training is now the office's mental health service
• Why a single check-in isn't enough, and the follow-up that so often gets missed
• Signposting over rescuing: you don't have to be the fount of all knowledge
• Dynamic flexibility: responding to the curveballs real life throws at working people

💡 Did You Know?

CAP started 30 years ago with one man, a financial background and ten pounds in his pocket, in Bradford. It now runs around 250 centres across the UK.

📝 Actionable Takeaways

• You don't need the ins and outs of someone's situation to support them. Acknowledge what's shared and ask what would help
• Build your own "what I can say" script, so opening up feels safe rather than all or nothing
• If you manage people, go first. Naming your own struggles gives everyone else permission
• Check in again weeks later. Distress often surfaces on a delay, long after the first conversation
• Keep a signposting list. Knowing who to point people to matters more than having every answer
• Make flexibility responsive, not just a line in a policy. The train delay, the school closure, the sick child

🗣️ Join the Conversation

Where's the line for you between bringing your whole self to work and keeping some things private? Share your thoughts and connect with us on social media.

Connect with Nicky: LinkedIn | CAP

1. https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicky-mclaughlin-040257b3
2. https://capuk.org