This paper explores the issue of how children come to be treated as workers in schools that are run as though they were businesses. It describes how the 'soft' form of human resource management provides a useful model for school reform, since it seeks to increase the productivity of the worker through 'humanistic' means, treating the worker as a full person rather than merely a cog-in-the-machine. As an example of how soft HRM [human resource management] can be directed towards pupils in schools, the paper shows that the politically persuasive arguments for pupil voice were based on the practice of employee voice, a soft HRM practice designed to improve the commitment and efficiency of workers. In the discussion, I look at how pupil voice serves as a demonstration of how soft HRM could combine a broad curriculum with managerialist logics to form a seductive, 'balanced' approach to school reform.