What Is The Highlands Ability Battery?

The Highlands Ability Battery was developed from the work of Johnson O’Conner; a Harvard graduate; and research scientist in the early 1900’s. In 1922, Mr. O’Conner was asked by General Electric to set up a human engineering program to find the right position for each employee. Mr. O’Conner developed a collection of “worksamples” to test in-born abilities and then related them to various work functions. The results of increased productivity and job satisfaction were significant, which led Mr. O’Conner to dedicate his life to studying natural abilities.

In 1930, O’Conner set up the “Human Engineering Laboratory” which later became the Johnson O’Connor Research Center. Hundreds of thousands of people have been tested in the eleven non-profit testing centers across the United States since 1930 and the process has been refined and improved over the 80 years of research. In 1992 the Highlands Company acquired the rights from Johnson O’Conner Research to convert their pencil and paper tests into a computerized version, which would allow people to have the benefit of natural ability testing without physically having to visit one of the eleven testing centers.

This was the creation of the Highlands Ability Battery. Now people on four continents have access to this incredible natural abilities testing tool, professionally administered through specially trained Highlands Counsellors, like Natural Abilities Specialist.

The Highlands Ability Battery measures your natural abilities in a unique way. It asks you to perform objective worksamples. Each worksample measures one ability and one ability only. The Highlands Ability Battery is a comprehensive assessment tool containing nineteen unique hands-on and timed worksamples. The test takes 3 hours and can be completed on your own computer or in one of the testing centres.

The Highlands Ability Battery™ requires the individual to perform nineteen different tasks or worksamples, each measuring a different ability. The worksamples are timed. This enables us to measure the relative ease with which the individual performs each task.

What Does The Test Measure?

The Testing Process