More important than what you earn, more important than your benefit package, most important to how you feel about your work is having a caring boss. A 2000 Gallup poll of people working in 700 different companies showed most people rate a caring boss as most important to how they feel about their work.
According to Webster's online dictionary, caring means: "showing a care; having or displaying warmth or affection; feeling and exhibiting concern and empathy for others". If your boss exhibits these attributes, you're more likely to enjoy your work.
To Webster's list of characteristics, let's add "active listener". If someone is really listening to you, that's a strong indicator they care about you and your thoughts, ideas and opinions.
And it's not just a caring boss who makes a difference to the workplace: the publisher of Canada's Top 100 Employers was quoted recently by the Toronto Star as saying "a strong correlation has been observed between charitable work and how an employer treats its own employees. Employers who take a broader view of their community responsibilities, it turns out, are almost always better places to work."