These voluntary sector organisations found themselves having to juggle conflicting
pressures. In addition to the need to contain labour costs, discussed above, the process
of contracting and re-contracting had placed significant limitations upon these
organisations’ ability to attract and retain staff, because of the short-term nature of
employment (Akingbola, 2004). The organisations had responded creatively to this
demanding situation and they had employed a number of “soft HRM” approaches
designed to foster employee commitment and motivation by non-financial means
(Alatrista and Arrowsmith, 2004), with some degree of success. At one level, this in
turn had contributed to developing a more sophisticated approach to HRM.