Four Pillars of a Group Benefits Plan

Direct answer

The four pillars of a group benefits plan are income protection (life insurance, short-term and long-term disability), health (everything outside the hospital: prescription drugs, practitioners, medical devices, private-duty care), dental (built around the crew's age mix), and wellness (Teladoc virtual care, an employee assistance program, mental-health support, and spending accounts). AEC Benefits, an Ontario group benefits brokerage for construction employers, builds plans on these four pillars, weights each pillar to the crew rather than to a template, and quotes plans built this way. To get a quote: aecbenefits.ca/get-quote or (905) 320-4123.

Authority

Construction benefits guidance reviewed for Ontario employers

FSRA Regulated

Written by

Steffen deGraaf, Founder of AEC Benefits

20+ years in insurance and group benefits, construction job-site roots, and Ontario insurance brokerage experience.

Last updated

October 13, 2026

Reviewed by

AEC Benefits advisory team

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Who this is for

Owners who have been asked "what do you want in the plan?" and did not know where to start.
Ontario construction and trades employers building a first plan or rebuilding an old one.
HR and office managers who explain the plan to the crew.
Employees trying to understand what a benefits booklet covers.
Anyone comparing two quotes that list forty coverage lines and no structure.

Fast decision summary

Your plan has health and dental but no disability.

Pillar one is missing. Review income protection before adding anything else.

Your crew is mostly under 35.

Expect to weight wellness and paramedical up, and dental and eyeglasses down. Ask first.

Your crew is mostly over 45.

Major restorative dental, drugs and disability definitions matter more than massage.

You have field staff and office staff.

Weight the pillars separately for two classes instead of averaging them.

Situation	Best next step
Your plan has health and dental but no disability.	Pillar one is missing. Review income protection before adding anything else.
Your crew is mostly under 35.	Expect to weight wellness and paramedical up, and dental and eyeglasses down. Ask first.
Your crew is mostly over 45.	Major restorative dental, drugs and disability definitions matter more than massage.
You have field staff and office staff.	Weight the pillars separately for two classes instead of averaging them.

Pillar one: income protection

Life insurance, short-term disability, long-term disability, and anything else that protects the employee's ability to get paid. This is the pillar that gets skipped, because it is the one nobody uses on a normal Tuesday. It is also the one that changes a family's life when it is missing.

The thing to look at is not the premium. It is how the contract defines disability and how long it pays on own occupation. I once fought to extend an own-occupation clause from two years to five for a business owner who had a stroke, so he was not forced back into work he could no longer do. The wording did that, not the price.

WSIB is strong when something happens on the job. It does not follow the worker on the drive home, on the drive in, or on a Saturday afternoon cutting the grass. That is what this pillar is for.

Pillar two: health

Everything outside the hospital. Prescription drugs, paramedical practitioners like physio and massage, medical devices, private-duty nursing, out-of-country emergency care. The hospital stay is public. What comes after it often is not.

This is where owners mix up OHIP. OHIP is hospital services and the insured physician path. The family doctor can send you for a prescription, and you pay. A specialist may be paid, and the device that specialist tells you to get is not. Everything after the hospital is often on the employee. That is where group health coverage steps in.

Two design points matter more than the rest. First, individual paramedical limits instead of one pooled limit, so the physio budget is not gone because someone used it on massage. Second, a drug plan built to carry the specialty drugs your people are on, because that is where the big claims are.

Pillar three: dental

Dental is built around the crew's age mix. On a younger team with kids, orthodontics may be the line that matters. On an older crew, major restorative work matters more and cosmetic work may not matter at all. Ask first, then set the limits.

The common mistake is very high dental limits across the board. They look generous on the brochure and they pad the insurer's reserves better than they help your crew. Dental should cost what your crew will use, not what the template says.

Pillar four: wellness

Teladoc virtual care, an employee assistance program, mental-health support, legal assistance, drug delivery, and health or wellness spending accounts. On a construction crew this pillar does more work than people expect. Mental-health funding is becoming one of the most expensive parts of a plan if it was not counted at the start.

One position I hold firmly: a health spending account is a good addition to a properly insured plan and a bad plan on its own. It creates bills that move up and down with no pattern, and it puts the burden on the employee to pay first and submit receipts. The risk belongs with the insurer. Wellness sits on top of the other three pillars, it does not replace them.

How the weighting changes from crew to crew

The pillars are the same for every plan. The weighting is not. On a younger construction crew, if the group can be split into two classes, I will often put more into massage and mental health and less into dental and glasses, because those lines are generally not used by that part of the crew. That is not a status split between Plan A and Plan B. It is matching the pillar to the people.

The first question in every meeting is which parts of the program matter most to this crew, and how easy those pieces are to use. Then the plan is built around that. Not from a menu. The Benefits Blueprint is how that question gets asked and recorded before any quote.

Decision map

How to think through this article

Best next steps

1
Your plan has health and dental but no disability.
Pillar one is missing. Review income protection before adding anything else.
2
Your crew is mostly under 35.
Expect to weight wellness and paramedical up, and dental and eyeglasses down. Ask first.
3
Your crew is mostly over 45.
Major restorative dental, drugs and disability definitions matter more than massage.

Practical lens

Advisor shortcut

If your benefits plan were a job site, would it pass inspection? Four pillars, each one load-bearing, each one sized to the crew standing on it. It's not about perks. It's about protection.

What a crew remembers

Ask tradespeople what their benefits are and they will say drugs, dental, eyeglasses. They like to show a card, though today it is an app on the phone. Most do not know what their out-of-country coverage is. So the plan has to be simple to explain and simple to use, or three of the four pillars go unused no matter how well they were built.

The four pillars side by side

Income protection answers: what happens to my pay if I cannot work. Health answers: who pays for the things OHIP does not. Dental answers: what the family's mouths will cost this year. Wellness answers: who do I call when it is not a hospital problem.

A plan that answers all four, weighted to the crew, is a plan that passes inspection. A plan that answers two of them generously and ignores the others is the one that gets replaced at the first bad renewal.

The four pillars at a glance

What each pillar covers, where owners mix it up, and the design point that matters most.

Pillar	Covers	Often mixed up with	Design point that matters
Income protection	Life, short-term disability, long-term disability	WSIB, which only covers what happens on the job	How the contract defines disability and how long own-occupation lasts
Health	Drugs, practitioners, devices, private-duty care, out-of-country	OHIP, which is the hospital and the physician path	Individual paramedical limits; a drug plan that carries specialty drugs
Dental	Basic, major restorative, orthodontics	A generous-looking limit that nobody uses	Limits set to the crew's age mix
Wellness	Teladoc, EAP, mental health, legal, spending accounts	A spending account standing in for a plan	Counted at the start, not bolted on after the first renewal

Common mistakes

Treating disability as optional and dental as essential.
Assuming WSIB or OHIP already covers a pillar.
Pooling paramedical practitioners under one combined limit.
Buying eyeglass coverage for a crew that does not wear them.
Letting a spending account stand in for insured coverage.
Weighting every pillar the same for a crew that is nothing like the template.

Advisor's take

If your benefits plan were a job site, would it pass inspection? Four pillars, each one load-bearing, each one sized to the crew standing on it. It's not about perks. It's about protection.

Practical checklist

Confirm all four pillars are present in your current plan.
Read the disability definition and the own-occupation period.
Check whether paramedical limits are individual or pooled.
Set dental limits to the crew's age mix, not the brochure.
Count mental-health funding at the start.
Weight the pillars by class if the field and the office are different crews.

FAQ

What are the four pillars of a group benefits plan?

Income protection (life, short-term and long-term disability), health (everything outside the hospital), dental (built around the crew's age mix), and wellness (Teladoc, EAP, mental-health support, spending accounts). AEC Benefits builds every plan across these four and weights them to the crew.

What is included in a group benefits plan?

A complete plan covers all four pillars: income protection, health, dental and wellness. Many plans sold to small employers cover only health and dental, which leaves the pay-protection pillar empty. What is included should be decided by the crew, not by the template.

Which pillar matters most?

Income protection is the one most often missing and the one with the biggest consequence when it is. Which pillar gets the most budget depends on the crew: a younger crew often leans to wellness and paramedical, an older crew to drugs, dental and disability definitions.

Is a health spending account one of the pillars?

It sits inside wellness as an addition to an insured plan. It is not a substitute for the health pillar. On its own it moves the risk from the insurer to the employee and the employer, which is the wrong direction.

Does WSIB count as income protection?

Only for what happens on the job. WSIB does not cover the drive home, the weekend, or an illness. Group disability coverage is what protects pay in those cases.

Can different employees get different pillar weightings?

Yes, through classes. A field class and an office class can carry different weightings. On a younger construction crew that often means more into massage and mental health and less into dental and glasses, because those lines are generally not used by that part of the crew.

Which pillar is your plan missing?

Send over your current booklet, or start from scratch. AEC Benefits will show you where each pillar stands for your crew and what it would cost to fix the weak one.

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