Recently joined a team on contract and have been asked to make significant changes with little to no background
Somewhat long so TLDR at the bottom. I'm fairly new to people leadership (2-3 years) and recently joined a company on a 1 year contract while the incumbent (lets call them Carrie) is on leave. Within the first month, I was asked to fire a member of the existing team (let's call them Alan) with my boss saying "everyone has problems with them" but very little else to go on. My boss would also like me to write up a new job description to hire someone else at a more senior level within the department that is "more qualified" (let's call them Bob - I dont believe my boss is partial to Bob though, I'm sure this was a suggestion from Carrie ). I have asked for some feedback from team members on Alan and 2 of the 4 I asked had significant negative feedback but they also highlighted that this issue has been ongoing for at least a year. When I asked my boss why the decision was delayed despite these issues, my boss vaguely mentioned the timing didn't work out and HR was worried about optics at that time. The thing is, I found out that Alan's previous manager wanted to rate them as underperforming in the last annual review but was overridden by my boss to be "performing". Alan had also never been put on a PIP but was given feedback multiple times about their issues. Just to cover all my bases, I spoke to HR and this time they saw no issue with going forward with the firing but did caution that this employee is known to be difficult.
All this is being exacerbated by the fact that 1) Carrie didnt leave any documentation relating to their plan for Alan or Bob 2) this particular team's job scope is outside my area of expertise meaning I have no way of judging if Alan or Bob are good/bad at their job outside of what others tell me 3) being new to the organization I'm still trying to figure out how everything works and the dynamics between the various teams
TLDR: joined new team on 1 year contract. boss wants me to fire employee A (who is said to have performance issues) and hire employee B for a more senior role. Nothing is documented (from incumbent or my boss) and no PIP but HR doesnt see issues other than employee A being difficult.
What's the best way to move forward in this sticky situation? My gut is telling me that they're trying to take the easy way out by having a temp like me do the firing. I've also never fired anyone before so I wonder if it's just first timer jitters. Any advice is greatly appreciated!