In fact, work has probably never been so good; the planning, the personalities, the power balancing, that lovely 'reward system' and the fantastic creative communication that takes place from 9 to 5 has brought meaning to toil so that most of us rank work up there with friendships, family and foreign holidays when we think about things from which we gain pleasure.

Calrsberg don't do work cutlture but if they did it would probably sound a lot like the one above. . .

Even though right now, the family relations thing is getting just that little bit precarious so that heading into the office for a few hours one of these drawn out days might just be a salve, for the rest of the year, families are not such hard work and friendships don't demand what getting up at 7am and pretending to be nice all day does over the long term.

So while families and friendships and certainly foreign holidays come tops, work isn't far behind for a growing population of people for whom work is great.

So, work is the new black, then?

Those not on the journey to occupational fulfilment beware; there's a huge cache of satisfaction out there for the taking and it's all getting easier by the year.

That's according to Bob Lee, director of Great Place to Work (Ireland) Inc, and the Irish wing of the international organisation of the same name. He says greatness at work not only exists but can be sustained well into the New Year.

'Tis the season for illusions but surely such a massive turnabout in our terms of employment hasn't occurred over night without our noticing? Or wasn't it true way back then when we were told Santa's not for real?

According to Lee, the workplace and our insights into it have matured and advanced, with resultant leaps and bounds in satisfaction for workers. Relations at work have become more science than art, complexities have been debunked and re worked so that healthy, dynamic workforces are being bred.

And a great workplace is not just for Christmas.

He and his colleagues survey and analyse workplace climate and culture, interpret what people say and what they hold back, decipher the cynical smirks and the satisfied smarmy senior smiles as they catalogue remuneration packages, hours worked and sense of self worth reported.

They do this through questionnaires and focus groups, bench marking and walkabouts, short interviews and surveys. Then, he says, they can predict and calculate with precision what are the effects of high ratings - and low ratings, although he won't tell us about them.

And the point of the exercise is to crown one organisation winner of the Great Place to Work in Ireland competition, with nine following hot on its heels, and another 40 further down so that the top 50 companies can be serenaded. Across Europe and into India, Japan and - of course - the US, the top 10 companies are selected each year in what started out as a Quaker-led attempt to improve how people at work feel and are treated.

Ireland's winners last year included 02, Temple Street Children's Hospital, Intel, Accenture and Anglo Irish Bank. This year's winners are now being finalised and will be announced in February and anyone considering putting a few bets on, ahem, buying some shares, would do well to consider the top 10 great Place winners.

The statistics are impressive. In the US, the performance of the publicly traded Greatest Company winners from 10 years ago to date has outperformed both the S & P 500 and the Russell 3000 by a huge margin.

Taking 1998 as the start year, up to 2005, the performance of the S&P was a 4.81% rise, the Russell rose 5.22%, but the Great Companies rose 10.12% if bought and held. If reset annually, an investment in the Great listed companies, from the top 100 in the US, would have yielded and increase of 14.75%, three times the S & P rate.

Investing in organisations that score well on the Great Place scale isn't akin to going soft on business and engaging in a crochet and knitting type approach to business.

Technological and societal advances mean that the bandied about adage about the people in the workplace being its best asset is fundamentally true, even though most people who espouse that view don't really mean it.

"Places that are great to work in are also great in terms of profits, performance and output, because the more satisfied people are more committed, trust more, give more, and are rewarded more and so the circle goes on. Then the better people are attracted to those companies, and there's prestige associated with them. As we become a more sophisticated working body, we aim at more than monetary reward, we want the psychological and social and status benefits these companies bring us, " says Lee.

Is this all just a case of old wine, new bottle, though?

The Great Place to Work Institute, which spans 30 countries and has been in existence for nearly 20 years, has a slightly different approach for different cultures.

"The questionnaire reflects the same values everywhere, although the questions are worded slightly differently for the US market. In Ireland, we ask more direct questions about, for instance, diversity and discrimination.

In the US, even posing a question about certain aspects of discrimination is considered politically incorrect, but other than that, what we find reflects a great place to work in, say Argentine is similar to what is a great place to work in France or in the US or in Ireland.

Great places to work, he says, have an underlying trust that is often overlooked by the plethora of HR practices and shiny booklets and procedural niceties we like to develop to reflect a corporate propriety often redundant apart from making the Corporates full of self belief.

"What trust is built on is credibility - can we believe in the system we work within - does the employer make us believe him or her and does he/she do what he says he'll do?

"Is there a sense of respect for each other from every angle, and finally, do employees believe there is a basic fairness in the system? If we find these three, we can say there is a high level of trust in that company.

"All our data comes from the people who work there, at whatever level they are at, and if they have trust, and added to that a pride in the output and camaraderie with each other, they will be hitting the high points in the Great Place scale."

The Great Place philosophy fits nicely into the underlying one in Stephen Covey's best selling business book, The Speed of Trust, which pinpoints trust as the hidden variable within the slippery formula for organisational success.

Without trust, all the policies remain dead and all the rewards are just bandages, it appears, so for the return to work period looming, the first step in the development of a high trust organisation requires asking ourselves the following and answering honestly:

1)Do people trust me?

2)If so, why?

3)If not, why not?

4)How can I alter my behaviour so that more people at work (and at home) will trust me this year; it can't be faked.

5)Trust isn't about personality; it's about character, effort, consistency and competence and it can be learnt.

Patricia Murray is a Work and Organisational Psychologist