Organizations display rainbow logos in June. HR departments introduce inclusion policies. DEI training is offered, certificates are issued, and reports are written. And yet, if you ask LGBTQIA+ employees whether any of this changes their actual working day, the answer is frequently: not much. The gap between institutional gesture and lived experience had been nagging at me for some time before I formalized it into a research question. I wanted to know whether the practices organizations claim to have correspond to what LGBTQIA+ employees actually perceive, feel, and live. What interested me most were the conditions under which the gap closes, what actually makes someone feel safe enough to be themselves at work. Those are the conditions worth understanding and building toward.