The most painless I have seen is the one my it colleague got at a bank: "Hi, you are fired, if you go sign the paper at HR today and you are out of here before 9:30 AM, we give you 6 months salary and an added 10K compensation for the June bonus, quite better than the legal package of 4 weeks pay you are entitled to. What do you say ?"
Consultation periods are just draining the moral of the unaffected team. Good luck if you have any work to do with the affected team.
Agreed - a friend of mine who was part of an internal audit team at a large financial company was let go with similarly generous terms. We went on vacation for a couple of weeks, and she found another fantastic job a short while after we came back.
While it I have no idea if it would apply elsewhere in the world, I feel like giving people a window (doesn't have to be 6 months) where they truly don't have to worry can have a profound impact on their ability to move along with their career, even under these circumstances.
Consultation periods are just draining the moral of the unaffected team. Good luck if you have any work to do with the affected team.