Have you ever been made redundant? Or made anyone redundant? The chances are that you will not have given or received notice mid-way through a task that necessitated the “about to be laid-off” performing to an audience.

But that’s what happened to singers at the English National Opera (ENO) during their final performance of the acclaimed opera adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel. They were sent e-mail notices by the ENO’s “head of people” just before going on stage. Most only managed to read them in the interval.

Then, astonishingly, they carried on as if nothing had happened. It is difficult to conceive of many more throat-tightening pressures.

In the moment itself, being laid-off is all-consuming. Yes, in some cases, you may even have anticipated it. The industries in which redundancies have been announced this year may not be surprising – journalism, the arts, hospitality, retail and steel – but it is still shocking when it happens to you. In some cases, over time, it just might be a little bit of a blessing, an emancipation, or it kick-starts a new career. But for most people, it is an unexpected, sudden and terrifying calamity that represents an existential threat to their lives.

As someone who has been both the deliverer and recipient of such news, I know it is never easy. And, as an executive who has worked with that “head of people” (or HR director), devising a plan to – euphemistically – “restructure” the business, I know that there are kinder ways of delivering the news empathetically and formulating the “package”. Meanwhile, the recipient, often alone in the room with their boss and a “deputy head of people” (if lucky), only hears “we’re making you redundant” and leaps straight to the brutal nub: “How will I pay my mortgage or rent (and in the US: healthcare)?” Then, they panic about how to go home and tell loved ones.

Let’s be clear, that’s – almost – always going to be the case. But trauma can be mitigated. First, executives and HR should deliver the news in person and sympathetically, if not with empathy. It is imperative that employees do not learn the news from a third party, nor that they are informed via a soulless digital platform. Although they may not initially hear anything beyond “we’re letting you go”, it is vital to have readied a plan for them. Assistance on answering questions, finding another job internally or externally, a guide to what it means for benefits and help in how to navigate pension and mortgage implications are all of real use once the initial shock has subsided.

Some more enlightened companies also offer external counselling – easy to mock in the moment, but perhaps invaluable in the mid-term.

The median FTSE chief executive salary is now 118 times that of the median full-time employee. Surely, the C-suite can see that it can afford to be more kind rather than more Scrooge-like?

To those ENO singers and others stunned by cruel lay-offs recently, I wish you strength and courage and assure you that light will emerge from the immediate, daunting darkness.