In a recent episode of the RecTech Podcast, host Chris Russell sat down with Stef Bloom, Chief People Officer at SPEAR Physical and Occupational Therapy. Bloom shared insights on applying consumer and hospitality strategies to healthcare talent acquisition, driving employee retention, and navigating the evolving role of the CPO.
Q: Stef, you recently joined SPEAR after nearly 20 years in consumer brands. What drew you to physical therapy?
Stef Bloom: SPEAR was actually a brand-new space for me! I’ve spent around 15 years in growing consumer brands, so healthcare wasn't initially on my radar. What captured my attention was how our CEO and Founder views the business: SPEAR is essentially a hospitality brand that happens to specialize in physical therapy. Bringing best-in-class consumer strategies—like elevated service design, visual presentation, and patient Net Promoter Scores (NPS)—into a clinical setting made it an opportunity I couldn't pass up.
Q: What are your top priorities 90 days into the role?
Stef Bloom: My immediate focus spans two key areas:
Talent Acquisition: Refining our Employee Value Proposition (EVP) and sharpening why SPEAR is an employer of choice in a compressed healthcare job market.
People Analytics: Better connecting data across our talent pipeline—linking our ATS (Lever) with our HRIS (Dayforce) to analyze the complete employee journey from top-of-funnel recruiting to onboarding, retention, and exit insights.
Q: How do you source talent for a growing network like SPEAR?
Stef Bloom: Most of our talent acquisition is outbound because organic inbound applications are relatively low in this specialized field. Our single largest talent pool consists of third-year physical therapy students completing clinical internships with us. This creates a mutually beneficial setup: students get to test-drive our culture, while we evaluate their cultural fit and ramp time.
Q: How do you retain clinical talent once they are onboarded?
Stef Bloom: We place a major emphasis on continuous professional development. Physical therapy programs teach clinical expertise, but they don't always cover business management or leadership. To bridge that gap, we offer internal leadership programs structured like an MBA curriculum:
Emerging Leaders Program for rising clinical talent.
Advanced Leadership Development for Clinical Directors.
100% Internal Promotion Rate: All of our Clinical Directors started as staff therapists and were promoted internally.
Q: How is the role of the Chief People Officer evolving today?
Stef Bloom: CPOs can no longer just be HR subject matter experts. Today, you have to be a business executive first who happens to specialize in HR. It’s about understanding the P&L, recognizing how business decisions impact people, and ensuring people strategies directly drive organizational outcomes.
Q: What are your thoughts on AI in human resources and talent acquisition?
Stef Bloom: AI is a powerful time-saver for administrative overhead—whether that's sourcing assistance, routine HR changes, or data analysis. Offloading that operational heavy lifting frees up time for the work AI can't replicate: empathetic leadership, face-to-face connection, and relationship-building. At the end of the day, healthcare is a human-first business.
